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the lufkin news Then and Now: Downtown Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Progress Angelina County
Then&Now Downtown Inside this section Downtown Venues...... 2H
Lufkin ISD.................. 5H
Milagros to-go............ 3H
Perry Bros. Building... 6H
Hotel Angelina............ 4H
The Pines Theatre....... 8H
From water to coffee
By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
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he mere mention of The Standpipe Coffeehouse these days has people making plans to enjoy some great music, a relaxed atmosphere and, most of all, a good cup of coffee. Turn the clock back 100 years in Lufkin and the same term would likely find people on Cotton Square, where the standpipe served as the city’s water supply. Built in 1891, the storage tank was constructed of rectangular sheets of steel bolted together to form a circular tank that stood 100 feet and had the capacity to hold 84,600 gallons of water. It was the center of attention in downtown Lufkin, the towering black cylinder high in the air just behind the railroad depot. By the 1920s, more modern technology for keeping a safe water supply had been discovered, and the pipe was unbolted and taken down. Until early 2011, the standpipe was pretty much forgotten until Mark Hicks, who was renovating Hotel Angelina and other businesses downtown, got the idea of a downtown coffeehouse named The Standpipe. Owner Ben Harbuck said when Hicks approached him with the idea, he immediately liked it. “He was revitalizing downtown and he asked me if we could get people downtown, and I told him absolutely,” Harbuck said. “I told him it was a horrible idea if he wanted to make a lot of money, but a great one if he wanted people downtown.” Harbuck’s relaxed, contemporary attitude hints of an appreciation for the history of Lufkin, much like Hicks’ when it comes to talking about downtown revitalization. “There is so much culture here that you will not find anywhere else,” Harbuck said. “Many of our musical acts travel the country making a lot of money, but they always want to come back to The Standpipe because they have made friends here. Some of them might charge us $200 a night when they typically make $2,000 a night. They just want to be here.” The historic building features a collection of timeless photos gracing the walls, all pictures of early life in Lufkin, as well as the likeness of the original standpipe that stood in downtown Lufkin. The building where the coffeehouse is housed, Harbuck said, was built in 1922.
Standpipe Coffeehouse named for Lufkin’s former water supply location
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
The original standpipe that stood in the air near Cotton Square in downtown Lufkin is where The Standpipe Coffeehouse name was derived.
“Downtown is the center of Lufkin, where all the culture started and can grow even more today. I am a believer that you should love where you live. Ben Harbuck
Owner of The Standpipe Coffeehouse
Residents living in the downtown lofts are regular customers of the coffeehouse, and Harbuck said he hopes that with the addition of Angelina Flats inside Hotel Angelina, downtown living will grow even more in popularity. “I love working together with
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
Ben Harbuck, owner of The Standpipe Coffeehouse in downtown Lufkin, prepares for an evening of the Hidden Valley Music Festival recently. The coffeehouse is a popular gathering place day and night for local and out-oftown customers. so many different business owners and the community. It has really given me a sense of direction for downtown,” he said. “Downtown is the center of Lufkin, where all the
culture started, and can grow even more today. I am a believer that you should love where you live. If you don’t like it in Lufkin, you should go. There are definitely a lot of cool
places in the country to live, but a lot of them don’t have what we have. It is a sense of belonging, a smalltown feel with a lot of access.” Bands typically travel across the state to play at The Standpipe, regardless of the genre, and crowds gather there on weekend nights to enjoy all types of coffee drinks, smoothies and desserts. Harbuck said adults are free to bring in a bottle of wine, but he prides himself in not serving alcohol. “To move to alcohol in the evenings would be great for our older crowd,” he said. “However, I think it is important to recognize that there are a lot of families who come here. I may not always look like the popular choice, but having said that, with the families and children who come here to have a good time, you can have a great time without alcohol. I want my guests who do bring it in to know where their limits are, and in three years I have never had a problem.” A type of art gallery occupies one corner of The Standpipe with displayed artwork that lends culture and sophistication to the large room bordered on one side by the original brick wall that still bears the CocaCola logo. Harbuck said it was uncovered beneath two inches of plaster as the business was preparing to open. The exposed wood, tin trim and long wooden bar surrounded by cafe-type tables and chairs makes a perfect spot for sipping away on a cup of java, reading a book on a quiet afternoon or enjoying live music. The outdoor tables are nice for a sunny spring day, and Harbuck said hosting the Hidden Valley Music Festival each year brings in a crowd from out of town as well as local patrons. The Standpipe has also hosted several political events and speakers, and provides a gathering place for politicians to speak to constituents. “Just the idea that they are beginning to believe in downtown again is exciting to me,” Harbuck said. “I don’t have any regrets by moving here. We are really a counter-culture shop in a way. We could make a lot more money being south of town, but I wouldn’t change anything. You build relationships down here. We are three years in and we are just beginning to see the benefits of deciding to move downtown.” Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Downtown the lufkin news
Downtown Venues
offer a glimpse of the past, MODERN COMFORTS By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
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ith many aging buildings and deserted streets in downtown Lufkin, local investors Mark Hicks and Todd Stracener realized that a way to bring the area back to life was the creation of downtown entertainment venues. Each building has its own history, and today, through
“Each small growth is a connecting piece toward a vibrant downtown. As with any change for the better, you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good, and the community is embracing what is happening in downtown.” Barbara Thompson
Lufkin Main Street director
restoration and strategic planning, the buildings are beginning to offer a glimpse of Lufkin’s early days with a heaping dose of modernization. The entertainment venues are in demand many weekends, and all work to create new memories for special events, meetings or social gatherings. Barbara Thompson, Lufkin Main Street director, said that although Lufkin suffered like many other
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
Downtown entertainment venues have something to offer for any occasion. The Lodge offers a grand ballroom that will accommodate up to 150 guests, while Behannon’s Warehouse, Abram’s, The Grand On First and The Glenrock each offer unique qualities for private entertaining and public functions. Pictured here, Lowery’s Courtyard, on First Street, is also used for many private events. cities did in the 1970s when downtowns were deserted for new shopping malls, the movement in Lufkin has taken hold, pulling crowds back into the downtown area. Part of Thompson’s job is to help keep that growing enthusiasm going. One way of doing that, she said, is to keep the public returning downtown for a reason, and the entertainment venues restored in
several historical buildings work to do just that. “Each small growth is a connecting piece toward a vibrant downtown. As with any change for the better, you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good, and the community is embracing what is happening in downtown,” Thompson said. “Downtown has evolved into a happening place to bring fam-
Confidence.
ily and friends. An array of events are held in downtown venues, such as weddings, receptions, school and family reunions, birthday and civic group parties, and street festivals, to name a few. Downtown has great inside and outside venues. The community is not just talking about downtown, they are utilizing it. Downtowns are known as the heartbeat of a community, and
downtown Lufkin is pumping the community with excitement.” The entertainment venues include five locations that can be rented for private or public functions. The venues offer not only the use of the buildings, but local suppliers provide a full selection of supplies from chairs to linens, dishes, glasses and even tents for SEE Venues, PAGE 7H
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Milagros to go
the lufkin news Then and Now: Downtown Sunday, March 30, 2014
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
Scotty Nunn, manager of Milagros on First Street in downtown Lufkin, stands behind the cooler filled with gelato the store now carries. The Italian ice cream is a first for downtown Lufkin. By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
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hen Milagros Tea House & Gifts wanted to open a second location, choosing the perfect spot was a no-brainer, according to Manager Scotty Nunn. Nestled between the Pines Theater and Standpipe Coffee House on First Street in downtown Lufkin stands the new location of Milagros Tea & Gourmet To Go. The shop features looseleaf teas, gifts and, just as the name implies, gourmet foods packaged and ready to take home. Mona Hill is the
owner of Milagros Tea House & Gifts. “When Mona and I started collaborating and talking about opening a second location, we both thought it was important to consider downtown because every store in downtown has a story to tell each and of itself,” Nunn said. “Being a third-generation Lufkinite, my mother worked downtown at the five-and-dime when she was young. We made the decision and had a certain look in mind for the shop.” As shoppers step into Milagros, the scent of fresh tea leaves and other aromatic fragrances quickly
captures the senses. The building’s original red brick walls and stained concrete floor create a feeling of yesteryear, with beautiful gifts displayed throughout the store. The two front display windows are decorated with bright colors — one with a life-size mannequin dressed as a butler just waiting to take an order and the other with seasonal decorations, gifts and tea servers. Shoppers are likely to see a beautiful red upholstered chair sitting on the sidewalk that serves as the store’s signature chair. Matching ones are hung on the wall and placed on top of the cooler.
“We want people to come in and flash back to a time when downtown was the only place you could go and shop.” Scotty Nunn
Manager of Milagros on First Street
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“We want people to come in and flash back to a time when downtown was the only place you could go and shop,” Nunn said. “It is also important to support local stores and vendors because 47 cents of every dollar stays within the community locally as opposed to being sent to corporate offices in other areas. Supporting Lufkin business is important, especially our mom-and-pop shops that work day in and day out, shops that this town was built on.” A small sign in one corner of the front window says “We Proudly Carry House Granola.” Nunn tells the story of how purveyor and entrepreneur Hollie Henderson makes the product by hand in Austin. The granola is offered in regular and gluten-free styles. “A very good friend of mine lost her son, House, and his aunt Hollie had an interest in starting the business in honor and in memory of him,” Nunn said. “A portion of the proceeds goes toward research. We are the only ones in Lufkin, I believe, who handle House Granola, and I understand Central Markets just contracted with her to carry it, also.” Another store favorite is Stefano’s Gelato that is also unique to Milagros. Gelato is Italian ice cream that is all-natural and has 20 percent less sugar and 60 percent less fat than regular ice cream, so there is no guilt in enjoying it, Nunn said. Nunn said he grew up in Lufkin and recently returned after 14 years away. “I honestly could not believe my eyes when I saw the renovations going on downtown,” he said. “When I left here, you weren’t caught dead after sundown in downtown. Now we have color, life, and we enjoy nightlife downtown. We want to eventually get to a place where downtown Lufkin is truly an entertainment district.” Nunn said he is glad Milagros Tea & Gourmet To Go is on the cutting edge of change in the downtown area. Downtown merchants meet monthly to plan and strategize for downtown events, such as movie night in Lowery’s Courtyard, streetside entertainment and other monthly and annual events. “This is not a trend we are seeing downtown,” he said. “Downtown is growing and alive with activity. We love our downtown neighbors. We are kind of like one big family and we look out for one another. We have a lot of fun down here. It is a team effort that is definitely getting stronger.” Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Downtown the lufkin news
Hotel Angelina
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Restoring it to its former glory & beyond By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
calls every week from people looking for residential lofts. Recently, I was contacted by a surgeon in Houston who is contemplating a move to Lufkin and wanted information about our plans for Hotel Angelina Flats. This is a true indicator that people looking to make Lufkin their home want a vibrant downtown.” With the renovations of the hotel, other prime downtown destinations began to change, including the renovation of The Pines theater. In addition, new storefronts and window displays began to draw shoppers back to downtown. The hotel itself boasts several new
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ark Hicks said the first time he stepped inside the Hotel Angelina prior to taking on its renovation, he felt like he had “stepped onto the Titanic.” Hicks, president of Hotel Angelina Holdings, LLC, has been responsible for much of the rebirth of downtown Lufkin in recent years. Hotel Angelina on First Street is by far his biggest project, one that began as an idea as he looked through old photographs of what the hotel once was in its heyday and splendor. The hotel, built in 1922, housed 110 rooms and a grand ballroom. It was the cornerstone of downtown Lufkin in the early part of the century. Major events were held in the ballroom, and many of its rooms stayed rented with travelers arriving either by train or by car to scout out new business opportunities in Lufkin. By the 1970s, many of the rooms were vacant, and except for an occasional high school prom, the ballroom went unused. Falling into disrepair, the aging building for several years was owned by an out-of-state company that offered government housing to those who qualified. Getting the hotel back to its original condition would not be easy for Hicks, who made a plan to take on the project in phases. The first step was to approach city leaders for their approval of a tax abatement. The Lufkin City Council approved an incentive package for Hicks that included a $100,000 grant that would be used for roof replacement and a new facade. In return for the abatement and incentive package, Hicks was required to open retail stores on the first floor by the end of the first year. The incentives were contingent on a $500,000 investment by Hicks. In the past two years, Hicks has managed to restore the hotel’s facade, replace the roof and create five new retail outlets on the first floor. “In a very short period of time, we have taken what was a serious eyesore for downtown and made it one of the most attractive buildings in the historic district,” he said. A second phase is scheduled to begin on the second and upper floors that will offer the community a better, larger grand ballroom that will serve as a premier entertainment venue. The upper floors are scheduled to be upscale apartments, and will be called Angelina Flats. “After years of looking at old photographs of meetings and events in the ballroom, and now seeing that same room in such a state of disrepair, was quite surreal,” Hicks said. “Although things didn’t look anything like what had been described to me by many of those who once enjoyed the space, I still felt a great connection to the past. It was an inspiring moment, to say the least.” Though the dilapidated condition of the hotel early on appeared to be a lost cause, Hicks said it was the strong foundation of the structure that he knew made it well worth the work of restoration. “In terms of challenges, the hotel hasn’t been as bad as some might think,” he said. “In some ways, I attribute that to my experience in renovating old buildings. The hotel is by far the most sound structure in all of downtown. Some say its strength is that of a battleship. The building is a concrete structure. Because of this, it has really just been a process of removing different layers of cosmetic changes that have been made through the years. This is obviously a time-consuming process.” Hicks said with first-floor renovations nearing completion, the ballroom will be next in line for restoration. Additional square footage to recreate the showplace it once was is also being
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
This early photo taken of the Hotel Angelina depicts the building when it was new.
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
Morgan Burton, owner of Let Them Be Little, shows off her children’s boutique, one of the businesses already open in the retail plaza of Hotel Angelina.
“This is something that I am really excited about. It will be an impressive space for everyone to enjoy. Additionally, we will begin the development of Hotel Angelina Flats. These luxury flats for purchase will feature all of the amenities you might find in a metropolitan condominium.” Mark Hicks
President of Hotel Angelina Holdings, LLC,
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
Mark Hicks, owner and developer of the Hotel Angelina, stands just outside the front doors with several of the new retail storefronts behind him that have opened for business on the first floor of the hotel in the past year.
planned. “This is something that I am really excited about. It will be an impressive space for everyone to enjoy,” Hicks said. “Additionally, we will begin the development of Hotel Angelina Flats.
These luxury flats for purchase will feature all of the amenities you might find in a metropolitan condominium.” Hicks said there has been a flurry of interests from people wanting information about Angelina Flats, although
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he does not yet have a time line for completion of the properties. “Downtown living in Lufkin is becoming a reality,” Hicks said. “All of the lofts in our other downtown properties are completely occupied. We get
shopping destinations, including Let Them Be Little, a children’s fashion store, and Mama Tried, a home decor and antique store. In addition, Poise Boutique and Bella Salon and Boutique are open for business. The hotel’s most recent addition, Restoration Wine Bar, offers an upscale place to relax and offers lunch and dinner with more than 60 wine selections, both American and foreign. The setting resembles the hotel in the early ’20s, with brick walls, vintage furniture and a 22-foot granite bar. Hicks has also addressed environmental issues with the aging building, and the addition of new windows set to resemble the originals should be complete by summer. A celebration and open house is planned when Phase I of the renovations is complete that will coincide with the hotel’s 91st birthday. Hicks said he has not been disappointed since purchasing the building and looks forward to continued renovation, adding, “Failure is not an option.” “I am very pleased with everything that has come from the purchase of Hotel Angelina,” Hicks said. “The renovation of this building has taken what was an already thriving downtown and pushed it to the next level. When you look at what is taking place downtown, you won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the city. In just a few short years, downtown Lufkin has seen the onset of significant growth with the opening of 15 new businesses. These are businesses that did not exist before. This increases sales tax, creates jobs, and is truly something we should all be proud of.” Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Downtown Sunday, March 30, 2014
From 1905 to 2014 Changes in Lufkin Public Schools By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
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here were several oneroom schools scattered throughout East Texas at the turn of the 20th century, but Lufkin Public Schools was formerly chartered as a graded public school in 1905 in the downtown Lufkin area. That first year, seven teachers were hired to teach 10 grades with a total enrollment of 251 students. While many private schools flourished, it was the “free school” that took hold. In 1903, the Early Lufkin School was constructed at the site where the Pitser Garrison Convention Center sits today. In 1913, the first Lufkin High School was built on Ellis and Raguet streets. Central Ward Elementary was built in 1913 adjacent to the railroad tracks near Lufkin Avenue. After the high school and junior high schools were established, elementary schools began to be built throughout the area as enrollment grew each year. By 1964, Lufkin schools were scattered throughout the area and Carver Elementary, which housed grades 1-6, was dedicated for black students and relocated on Lubbock Street. It was later renamed Hackney Elementary. In 1966, Slack Elementary opened for students in the Fuller Springs community, and the district opened its first reading clinic on East Ward Street. In 1969, Redland Schools, previously a district of its own, annexed to Lufkin ISD. One of the most tumultuous periods in Lufkin ISD history would begin in 1970 when the United States filed suit against the Texas Education Agency and several East Texas schools, including the Lufkin district. The district would enter into a court order collaborating with TEA to prepare itself for immediate conversion to a unitary, non-discriminatory school
system. The plan entered into with the government would dissolve the dual system of schools in Lufkin. In 1971, integration in all Lufkin school occurred, and students from Dunbar High School were merged with Lufkin High School. The former all-black school became a junior high campus. By 1973, a special education campus was founded at Hackney Elementary, and in 1973 the original Central Ward School was closed. Other changes were also in the works. The junior high building on Ellis Avenue became Junior High West, with a new junior high to be built on the east side of town. Elementary schools were shuffled to accommodate the growing number of students in the district. One of the original elementary campuses, Mabel Melear, was closed in 1976; by 1979, it was named as the district’s alternative campus for at-risk students. Voters passed bond elections, and the district built elementary campuses in new neighborhoods. Brookhollow and Anderson elementary schools were completed, as was Brandon, which would house the PACE program for gifted and talented students. Garrett and Coston Elementary campuses also began serving the growing bilingual population in Lufkin, teaching both English and Spanish. The first pre-kindergarten classes were established on the Brookhollow campus, and by 1990 LISD had once again entered into a court agreement to develop a TriEthnic advisory committee to replace the outdated Bi-Racial Committee that was established in the 1970s. The Tri-Ethnic Committee worked to address a broad range of desegregation-related issues within the district, and by 1991 all elementary campuses were paired to alleviate the disproportionate transportation burden placed on families SEE LISD, PAGE 7H
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Downtown the lufkin news
Perry Brothers building
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
The Perry Brothers building, built in the early 1900s, still stands as stately as it did then and houses offices and restaurants for many businesses in the four-story structure.
By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
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here have been many businesses come and go through the years in downtown Lufkin. Some seem to stay longer than others; a few have remained and stood the test of time, remaining in families for generations. With the Angelina County Courthouse and the Ward R. Burke Federal Courthouse positioned adjacent to one another downtown, naturally many law offices and businesses are located in surrounding buildings. Some of the century-old buildings, such as the Perry Brothers building and the original Lufkin National Bank building across the street, still stand today with as much character as they did in the early 1900s. What’s changed are the businesses housed inside them. The chain of Perry Brothers department stores began in 1914 when Frank Perry was given the opportunity to purchase a store in the town of Center, according to “Land of the Little Angel, A History of Angelina County, Texas.” Along with his brothers, Roscoe, John, Hollis and C.W., they later purchased a five-and-dime store in Lufkin. After founding the first Perry Brothers, other stores quickly opened, and the business incorporated in 1924. Through the lean years of the Great Depression, the brothers would often leave the store open up to 18 hours a day during harvest seasons to accom-
Historic downtown building has housed many different businesses through the years modate the needs of all farmers as they were paid for their produce and agricultural products. By 1949, the chain of stores had grown to 65 and downtown Lufkin was a flurry of activity, especially around Christmastime when the sidewalks were filled with shoppers. The basement of Perry Brothers was known as Toyland, where children could gaze at the displayed toys and make the annual visit and requests from Santa Claus. By the 1990s, the chain totaled more than 150 stores but began to dwindle as larger discount warehouses opened across the state. The downtown store finally closed, but the stately building still stands and holds many professional offices within the building that, historically, has been one of the tallest downtown. For the past few years, the basement that once served as Toyland now holds a popular Italian restaurant, Manhattan’s. Owner Dustin Sabani opened the beautifully decorated restaurant that accommodates private functions and wedding receptions, but always has a table for a diner looking for lunch or dinner. An extensive wine list
“When you look at what is taking place downtown, you won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the city.” Mark Hicks
President of Hotel Angelina Holdings, LLC,
and authentic Italian dishes keep diners returning to Perry Brothers to ride the elevator to the basement that opens to Manhattan’s restaurant. Also located in the Perry Brothers building are various other businesses and offices on its four floors, including APEX Design Group, KSA Engineers, Turner Insurance Agency, Swain and Baldwin Insurance, and Turtle Creek Petroleum. Fronting First Street and Calder Square on the first floor of the building are the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council of East Texas, Custom Lamps and Shades, Lisa’s Bridal and Formal, and Barachah Church. Other long-time downtown businesses include A-1 Party Rental on
South First, Bove Sewing Center, 501 E. Lufkin Ave., a slew of legal offices, a day spa, antique shops and cafes. Many of the stores have remained in the same family for many years, while others continue to lease downtown space both upstairs and downstairs to either continue or fulfill a dream of owning a downtown business. A telephone accessory shop and art galleries have replaced the old drug stores like Murrell’s and Trevathan’s. The retail stores like Matthews-Miller and Clark-Ayers have been replaced with a downtown cafe and a soon-to-open brewery. Other downtown retailers, like JC Penney and Beall’s, fled for the malls when they were built in the 1970s.
The recent renovations along First Street have seen a flurry of new businesses opening that include a trendy children’s shop, a wine bar and other exciting storefronts that draw a customer inside to browse and purchase. Downtown Lufkin may not be what it was at the turn of the 20th century or even what it was at mid-century at its peak, but according to downtown entrepreneur Mark Hicks, who has been responsible for much of its revitalization, downtown Lufkin is nothing like it will be in the future. “The renovation of the hotel (Angelina) has taken what was an already thriving downtown and pushed it to the next level,” Hicks said. “When you look at what is taking place downtown, you won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the city. In just a few short years, downtown Lufkin has seen the onset of significant growth with the opening of 15 new businesses. These are businesses that did not exist before. This increases sales tax, creates jobs and is truly something we should all be proud of.” Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Downtown Sunday, March 30, 2014
Venues
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LISD
Continued from Page 2H outdoor use. The Main Event, which opened downtown in 2008, serves as the go-to place for anyone wanting to rent four of the historical downtown venues. The Lodge One of the most historic buildings in downtown is the Masonic Lodge, constructed in 1916. Located at the corner of First Street and Shepherd, it sits directly across from the Hotel Angelina. The lodge occupied the second-floor meeting room, with retail stores located street-side on the first floor. Built by the Masonic Building Association, the grand banquet hall is on the second floor and the third floor was reserved originally reserved as the reception room. Today, The Lodge has been restored to its original elegant atmosphere and ambience. It sets a mood with a hint of the preserved history, yet with modern conveniences. Once the organization began forming different chapters throughout the area, the downtown lodge was held only for large ceremonies and meetings by the Freemason group. With its pine flooring, crown molding and original windows, the expansive building has original exposed brick walls and tin-pressed ceilings. The venue can accompany up to 150 guests and includes a kitchen prep area, tables and chairs. The venue rents for $1,100 per day on weekends and $550 per day Monday through Thursday, according to The Main Event website. Behannon’s Warehouse Behannon’s, 205 N. Fourth St., was built in 1915 and offers a unique and charming brick ambience. Originally serving Lufkin businesses as a storage warehouse, the original brick walls and stained concrete floors present the perfect place for events. The exposed ceiling rafters help retain the building’s character and its humble beginnings. The versatility of the revitalized venue draws crowds for weddings, receptions, parties and many other small to mid-size gatherings. Behannon’s Warehouse can accommodate up to 200 guests, depending on the required setup, and is wired for live bands with up-to-date sound equipment. The building also has a food preparation area and a covered porch for those wanting to be outdoors. Behannon’s is available for $650 per day Friday through Sunday and $325 Monday through Thursday, according to The Main Event website. Abram’s The historic building known as Abram’s is chronicled as being the oldest of Lufkin’s mercantile businesses. Originally, Abram’s General Store was operated in 1889 by three brothers, Simon, Joe and
Harry Abram. After the death of his brothers, Harry renamed the store H. Abram and Son. Through the generations that followed, other businesses would operate in the two-story building, but it has become known an Abram’s throughout the decades since. Today, the venue has been restored to a distinctive style that mirrors downtown Lufkin’s uniqueness and rich history. The interior shows off the original brick walls, high ceilings and chandeliers. The venue can accommodate up to 275 people and has a kitchen and food preparation area. Rental includes a dozen round tables, five banquet tables and 100 mahogany chairs. Prices are $1,100 per day Friday through Sunday and $550 per day Monday through Thursday, according to The Main Event website. The Glenrock Built in 1909, The Glenrock, located on historical “Cotton Square,” is bordered by what once was Lufkin’s railroad depot on Angelina Street. Originally, at the Glenrock Saloon, many a visitor exited the train looking for a place to quench his thirst in the days before prohibition. The sidewalks in front of the building served as a place for many who stood to watch the trains or view public hangings. Today, the saloon’s brick walls of the original saloon remain part of the renovated venue. Through the years, Cotton Square became Calder Square and served at the location for Lufkin’s first library, Kurth Memorial Library. Today, the building is home to the administration of Lufkin Independent School District. The railroad depot is gone, but The Glenrock still serves many events and accommodates small and intimate gatherings for the best of good times. The Glenrock is available for $550 Friday through Sunday and $275 Monday through Thursday, according to The Main Event website. Grand On First The Grand on South First, 416 S. First St., is a relatively new entertainment venue that can accommodate large gatherings. For many years the building served as auction house and stayed stocked with items from antiques to tools. Today, managed by Carnes and Company Auctioneers, it has been restored as one of Lufkin’s largest entertainment venues, accommodating up to 400. The expansive building can be decorated and supplied for any type of gathering and offers an intimate gathering room. The venue is available for downtown entertainment crowds or events, anniversary and birthday parties and weddings. For more information about The Grand On First, call 632-1616. For more information about other downtown entertainment venues, visit maineventlufkin.com. Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
Continued from Page 5H of minority children. By the mid 1990s, the Redland campus officially closed its doors to students and became an instructional services building, and trustees elected the first woman to lead the district. Under her direction, voters passed a bond election, and Junior High East was renovated to become Lufkin High School. The old high school on Denman Av-
with the construction of a new library. The district moved its transportation department into a renovated car dealership on Timberland Drive. In 2001, the Lufkin Panthers football team became state champions. The district has served many needs, but none like it did in 2005 when it accommodated thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Rita and again in 2008 during Hurricane Ike. Changing times and the threat of terrorism caused
RHONDA OAKS/The Lufkin News
Lufkin ISD started in downtown Lufkin and now, 100 years later, is back in downtown with the administration building located on Cotton Square at the intersection of Cotton Square and Shepherd Street. Both street signs indicate the 100 block, marking the spot at which both streets began.
enue would become Lufkin Middle School. The district would continue to renovate elementary campuses and restructure programs to fit the needs of students. In 1998, Junior High West would close its doors for good after the opening of the new high school in 1999. The building was sold in 2000 and is now home to a charter school, Pineywoods Community Academy. Beginning a new century indicated much change for LISD when, in 2000, the desegregation order was lifted by federal Judge John Hannah. From its early days in downtown Lufkin, LISD has come full-circle. Early in the 2000s, a property exchange was negotiated between the district and Kurth Memorial Library. The library’s original location on Calder Square now serves as the Lufkin ISD administration building. The library would move into a new facility on a portion of the Junior High West property
the district by 2008 to install a campus safety program, install campus cameras, enclose campuses with gates and fences, and enclose breezeways. In 2009, a tornado demolished Hackney Primary. A student health center was organized, along with a LISD police department. Changes were in the air again by 2013 when the district organized its first Education Foundation and trustees voted to hire the district’s first black superintendent. Lufkin ISD has remained a vital part of educating Lufkin’s children since the early 1900s, and with the administration building sitting in the middle of Calder Square in downtown Lufkin, it seems the district is poised to move even further into the 21st century with growth, providing the city with the assurance of welleducated leaders in the future. Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Downtown the lufkin news
The Pines Theater
By RHONDA OAKS The Lufkin News
L
ufkin has always shown an interest in the arts. Dating to 1909, when the Lufkin Opera House was built near Herndon and Frank avenues, the first theater to be built downtown served as a home to the Hoo Hoo Band and as a venue for local talent and road show productions. Disaster struck when fire destroyed it in 1920. Two other theaters opened in the early ’20s and remained open for a short time, but it was the grand opening of The Pines Theater in 1925 that had the city turning out to hear city officials declare it as the premier downtown entertainment venue. “Coast of Folly” starring Gloria Swanson was shown that first night. The Pines remained the top entertainment spot for many years. Lufkinites old and young lined the First Street sidewalk to get tickets for the Saturday shows. The cool, dark theater was filled with the smell of fresh popped popcorn as organ music entertained before each show. A ticket cost 25 cents in 1925, but there was a stark difference in the days when segregation affected Lufkin. Like other downtown establishments at the time, there were separate entrances for AfricanAmericans who were required to climb the staircase leading to the balcony and were not allowed to enter through the foyer and sit in the main theater. With time and integration, the world changed for the better. It was no different for Lufkin, and The Pines closed its outside entrance for good. Today, everyone is welcomed through the beautifully and meticulously restored foyer. Once inside, patrons are taken back in time to a simpler place when the reward for a hard week’s work was a trip to The Pines to relax in a cool, dark theater and enjoy a movie on a largerthan-life screen. There would be other theaters open through the years, such as the Ritz and the Texan, but it was The Pines that stood the test of time and remained a favorite until more modern theaters were built with the construction of area malls. The Pines, empty for many years, was neglected and fell into disrepair. In spite of its condition, the aging theater was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1988, but it would remain vacant until 2007, when the city of Lufkin purchased the theater. Former Lufkin mayor Jack
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Gorden had a dream of returning the theater to its original grandeur. Lufkin city officials took note of the historical significance of The Pines and caught the same vision Gorden had for restoration. On its grand reopening night in 2012, Gorden said he was proud to have been a part of the project from the beginning. “This is exciting. It was just kind of a dream that a lot of people in Lufkin had for a lot of years,” Gorden said. “It was either tear it down or move forward and build this. The usage for it in the future will be phenomenal; from the old to the young, they will all enjoy this facility. There was a time I wasn’t sure it would ever happen, but it did and I am proud to have been a part of it.” The beautifully restored venue didn’t happen overnight. When city officials entered the building for the first time, they found the roof collapsed and standing water in the orchestra pit. There was plenty of work to do to bring the dilapidated theater back to life. With a pump system to remove all the water and a new roof installed to prevent further damage, all of the seating and carpet had to be removed to rid the building of the mold caused by the leaking roof. The excitement of renovation caught on when Tara Watson-Watkins, director of the Lufkin Convention and Visitors Bureau, oversaw the project along with other city officials. The group began to catch a glimpse of what the project could be upon completion. For months, city workers replaced tiles and neon lighting, restored the damaged marquee and painstakingly began the process that would take more than three years to complete. “I am so proud to be a part of this community gathering spot where past memories of the theater thrive and new lasting memories are created,” Watson-Watkins said. “We are thrilled with the acts that we have brought to Lufkin over the past year in our Pines Presents Series and can’t wait to share the second season with our patrons. We thank everyone for believing in our vision and responding with enthusiasm and positive feedback.” With the help of advisory groups and consultants across the state to develop plans for everything from demolition, to construction, to final design, the public began to get a peek at the interior finishing work in 2012. With interior walls removed, plumbing and electrical upgrades were made possible, and a little history was revealed along the
Beautifully restored venue a local treasure for young and old
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
The Pines in its early days in Lufkin and as it looks today are not that different. After meticulous restoration and renovation, The Pines reopened in late 2012 and continues to entertain with movies and live performances, and is also available as a private venue.
way. Once interior walls came down, the theater’s original red brick was uncovered. Workers also found the original projectors upstairs in a corner, covered by trash and dust. The projectors were restored to an exact replica of when movies were seen using the large reels and pictures were casts through to the screen below. Guests can view the refurbished projectors through a window. It seems as though, once the restoration project began at The Pines, things started happening along the entire strip of First Street between Frank and Denman avenues. Storefronts began to take on new looks. Windows were once again filled with colorful displays. Shoppers began walking the sidewalks looking for hard-to-find items that could only be found in the quaint new shops. Now that the project is complete, stepping inside the door of the Pines
onto the tile work that is identical to the original, the art-deco lobby instantly brings back memories for those who grew up in Lufkin and remember the theater as it once was. Children once again gaze through the large glass concession case, and the smell of popcorn brings back memories of days gone by. In 2013, the theater hosted its first entertainment season that included live entertainment from such performers as Michael Martin Murphy, Jennifer Holliday, John Berry and Roslyn Kind. The 2014 Pines Presents Series features acts including Volcaldente, the Harlem Gospel Choir, Sandi Patty and Branson on the Road. Now, in addition to scheduled entertainment, the venue is available for rental and has already hosted a wedding and several other live concerts. With state-of-the-art sound equipment and a backstage area complete with a dressing room, it is once again a down-
town destination for many. “I think it says a lot about a community when they can look beyond the chaos and destruction and know that with a little love and great vision that something magical is possible,” Watson-Watkins said. “We have people from all over the world who have traveled to Lufkin to see some of our acts. Last year we had a man from Germany plan his entire trip to the United States and through Texas when we hosted Michael Martin Murphy. We have hosted people from at least five different states that we know of, and a couple from Alaska is joining us to see Celtic Nights. I say all of the time that I have the best job in the world. It is so rewarding to see our audience enjoy our series, and I look forward to the remainder of this season and those yet to come.” Rhonda Oaks’ email address is roaks@lufkindailynews.com.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Industry Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Progress Angelina County
Then&Now I n d u s t ry
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Quad/Graphics employee Adam Ditsworth sets the color on a press that prints retail newspaper inserts at the company’s facility in Lufkin.
Inside this section Angelina America............2I Lufkin Coca-Cola.............3I Brookshire Brothers.........6I
Dolphin Services and Chemicals........................7I
Changing with the times Quad/Graphics upgrading and changing Lufkin facility to better serve clients all over the USA By STEVE KNIGHT The Lufkin News
S
ome Lufkinites know it as Southwest Color Printing and others know it as Vertis, but the longtime printing facility on state Highway 103 in the eastern part of Lufkin continues to grow under its new owners, Sussex, Wisc.-based Quad/Graphics, Inc. Workers at the facility, which was built starting in 1956 with production commencing in 1958, print newspaper inserts and produce weekly circulars for grocery and retail clients across the country. Officials from Quad/Graphics and Vertis Holdings, Inc. announced in October 2012 an agreement that Quad/ Graphics will acquire all of the assets comprising Vertis’ businesses. Vertis simultaneously filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 relief to complete the sale. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved the proposed sale agreement in December 2012, clearing the way for the sale to close in January 2013. Since the acquisition, the company made a capital investment of about $4.2 million in building and permanent equipment. Blake Weiss, plant director for the Quad/Graphics facility in Lufkin, explained some of the upgrades and
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Quad/Graphics Lufkin plant controller Leigh Peery, left, and plant director Blake Weiss look over paperwork at company’s facility in Lufkin. changes the plant experienced in the last year, allowing better service for clients from California to Florida and up into the Midwest. “We’ve installed two C700 presses, a C500 press and replaced another press, but we also removed some obsolete equipment,” Weiss said. “We took out some press lines, as well. We have about the same amount of equipment; however, our capacity is much larger. The equipment we installed is state-ofthe-art with a lot of technology.” In addition to building and system infrastructure modifications to accommodate the additional print capacity, relocation and updates for the existing locker rooms and restrooms were planned for the increased number of employees in the building. Weiss called it “a large transition.” “We continue to invest in the facili-
ty,” he said. “We’ve got some large projects going on. We’re replacing a wrapper and strapper machine. It’s more reliable with more technology, more state-of-the-art. We are remodeling our imaging department with plans to replace the equipment with more streamlined, higher-technology equipment. We’re transitioning all of our systems into the Quad/Graphics systems — what we call Smart Tools. Just a lot of projects and a lot of growth going on within the four walls of our plant.” The company qualified for a six-year tax abatement based on new guidelines passed by the Lufkin City Council last year for projects with a capital investment of $1 million to $5 million or creation of 21 to 50 new full-time jobs. According to a previous Lufkin News story, the company expects to hire a minimum of 29 new employees within
the first three years of the abatement period with the annual payroll ranging from $322,744 to $475,554 per year plus health benefits. The incentive offer also includes $3,000 per employee up to the 29 new jobs promised and a six-year tax abatement on new value on a 100, 100, 80, 60, 40, 20 percent schedule. According to company officials, the plant employs about 180 people. It started with 25 employees in 1958. Before it was Quad/Graphics and Vertis, the plant, known as Southwest Color Printing, was owned by Greater Buffalo Press, according to controller Leigh Peery. The plant originally printed comics — what some people call “the funnies.” “We were one of six or seven plants that belonged to Greater Buffalo Press,” Peery said. “The community knew us as Southwest Color Printing
because the plant next door was Southland Paper Mill. Even today when people ask me where I work, I have to tell them it’s by the mill.” Greater Buffalo, a family operation, owned the plant until 1988, but operations have not moved from the original location. Obsolete presses were removed and replaced throughout the ’60s, ’70s and into the ’80s. Letter presses were replaced with heat-set offset presses. The company continued to print comics until around 1990, when the plant started printing products for retail customers. With the Internet, the challenge, Weiss said, is to find distribution methods for the print product. “A lot of research has been done where people like to have that in their hands,” Weiss said. “We know that newspaper circulation is in decline, so we’re tasked with trying to figure out a different distribution method to get these into people’s hands. With the mail rate increase, that’s going to be an even bigger challenge.” And with its proximity to Houston and Dallas, the plant’s location is key, he said. “Being part of a large company, we try to situate the work where it’s regionalized for freight reasons,” he said. “You’re 100 miles from Houston and about 160 miles to Dallas. The reach that we have is really significant. You can cover all of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi to Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. We have a very key location. We continue to invest in this facility, and I think that’s key, especially in today’s age and where our economy is right now.” Using a $35,000 second mortgage on his home and capital raised from a handful of associates, Harry V. Quadracci founded Quad/Graphics in 1971 and launched operations from a 20,000-square-foot abandoned warehouse in Pewaukee, Wisc., with a Baker Perkins “America IV” press and a borrowed saddle stitcher, according to the company’s website. Steve Knight’s email address is sknight@lufkindailynews.com.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Industry the lufkin news
Angelina
American, Inc.
Local saw blade cutting facility growing, looking for 30 percent growth by 2015
By STEVE KNIGHT The Lufkin News
W
ith a motto of “How we do anything means everything,” this Lufkin company’s mission is to market and sell the best band saw blades and related products available anywhere. The employees at Angelina American, Inc., a metal-cut-
“There’s a variety of customers that use these blades: machine shops, small or large; oil and gas companies use these blades to cut their drill pipe; construction companies use these blades to cut their high-beams and other structural materials for buildings; and even guys that make knives use our blades,” Hunter said. Hunter’s father, Monte
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Matt Hunter, vice president and general manager of Angelina American, demonstrates how the flash-butt welding machine works to weld a band saw blade together.
“As we strive to take care of our customers and put the best product we can as much as possible, we’ve seen growth.” Matt Hunter
Vice President and General Manager of Angelina American, Inc.
ting saw blade manufacturer in the Southpark Industrial Park in Lufkin, believe they’re doing just that. The saw blade material, from Augsburg, Germanybased Eberly, is imported through the Houston ship channel. The material comes in 250-foot rolls, then is cut to length and welded together using a flash-butt welding machine specific to the customer’s saw size. The company has exclusive rights to sell the product in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Louisiana as well as Texas, according to Vice President and General Manager Matt Hunter.
Hunter, opened the business in 1989 in Lufkin. It was originally a cutting tool distribution business; they sold drill bits and inserts to Lufkin Industries and local machines shops. They discovered the Eberly blades in 2001. Customers liked them and started buying them, but, according to Hunter, the company could acquire them only from a company in Iowa. In 2002, Eberly, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2011, asked if the company was interested in becoming a weld center for the south portion of the country. SEE Angelina America, PAGE 6I
This photo shows the 16,000-square-foot Angelina American facility in Lufkin.
Confidence.
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Rest easy. We have advanced infant care right here. When you have your baby at Woodland Heights, you can be confident that we’ll provide you and your newborn with very special, personalized care. You’ll also have the peace of mind in knowing that if your little one needs advanced care to get a healthy start, the only Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the deep East Texas area is right here. Our NICU has a dedicated staff with a neonatal nurse practitioner 24/7, and a neonatologist on call around the clock. To find out more, visit WoodlandHeights.net.
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Woodland Heights Medical Center is directly or indirectly owned by a partnership that proudly includes physician owners, including certain members of the hospital’s medical staff.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Industry Sunday, March 30, 2014
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From horse-drawn trailers to freight liners Lufkin Coca-Cola Bottling Company has been serving area since 1905 By STEVE KNIGHT The Lufkin News
“We can do things locally that we are tied to and mean something to us — non-profit groups we can support — but we are also privy to the knowledge and experience from the CocaCola Company and Dr Pepper.”
I
n 1886, an Atlanta pharmacist created a soft drink that could be sold at soda fountains. John S. Pemberton concocted a flavored syrup, mixed it with carbonated water, and an American legend was born. Frank M. Robertson, Pemberton’s partner and bookkeeper, came up with a name for the new concoction — Coca-Cola — and designed the script logo that’s still used 128 years later. Dr Pepper was created a year earlier, according to the Dr Pepper Museum website, at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco — a Texas original of sorts. Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist at the store, is believed to be the inventor of the drink. When he wasn’t mixing up medicine, Alderton liked to Lynne Haney serve carbonated drinks at the soda fountain. After numerous President of Lufkin Coca-Cola experiments, he finally he came across the mixture of fruit syrups he liked. ity counties in the 1960s. Morrison is credited with In 1972, more than a million naming the drink Dr. Pepper cases were distributed. In 1978, (according to the museum, the the company moved into its curperiod was dropped in the ’50s), rent location on Webber Street. but the origin of the name is unThe company is not just clear. drinks. Vend-Buffet, a full-serThose two unique flavors, vice vending operation, was esalong with other beverage prod- tablished in 1984. It grew to more ucts including Sprite, Minute than 400 accounts by 2011. Maid, Big Red, Powerade, V8 The “Looking Back” muand Dasani, along with their ral was painted in downtown diet and zero-calorie compan- Lufkin in 1996. One of the young ions, are distributed in Ange- girls standing on the back of lina, Polk and Trinity counties the truck is Irma N. Franklin, by the 75 employees of Lufkin grandmother to Lynne Haney, Coca-Cola Bottling Company. the company’s president since Lufkin Bottling Works, fore- 2007. runner of the company, was esThe company no longer tablished in 1905. W.D. Newsom bottles its own product; most bought the plant in 1911, and it’s products come from plants in remained in the same family’s Nacogdoches and Fort Worth, hands since. Newsom built a with Dr Pepper products comnew plant at the corner of An- ing from Houston. However, gelina and Dozier avenues, now unlike in the early 20th century, Frank Avenue, and purchased the company has better ways to the franchise rights to Dr Pep- distribute what is now 1.6 milper in Angelina, Polk and Trin- lion cases and 110,000 gallons of
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Lufkin Coca-Cola General Manager Jim Watkins, left, and President Lynne Haney stand next to a stack of product cases at their warehouse facility in Lufkin.
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Lufkin Coca-Cola Bottling Company distributes beverage products including Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper, Sprite, Minute Maid, Big Red, Powerade, vitaminwater, V8 and Dasani along with their diet and zerocalorie companions to customers in Angelina, Polk and Trinity counties. syrup each year. “Since 1905, there definitely has been big changes in the
way we deliver, from a horsedrawn trailer to the freight liners we have now, but the biggest
change has been the evolution of the information age,” Haney said. “They’re moving to all the
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technology and the difference it makes — it allows us to be more efficient with what we do in delivering. It changes daily. If you’re current, you’re a day behind. That’s probably the biggest change. We’re still visiting each of our customers and personally delivering those products.” The first Coca-Cola bottle was sold in Lufkin in 1909. About 8,888 cases were sold that year. The company has evolved since that time, said Jim Watkins, general manager since 2010, from a one-dimensional product — Coca-Cola in bottles — to many brands in an array of sizes. “I’m 53, and I remember when the six-and-a-half-ounce bottle was the only package,” Watkins said. “I could remember the bottling facility, and we used to have one of those downtown with the plate glass windows. Now, we have 1,100 separate (stock keeping units) in the entire CocaCola portfolio. There are over 180 that are low to zero calories. That’s a phenomenon from the last few years. You can still get a Coke or a Dr Pepper now in many different packages. It’s got to be a dozen or more.” Watkins said bottled water has become a big seller, with Dansani the fastest growing product in the company’s line, but the popularity of Coke, Diet Coke and Dr Pepper continues. Some may remember when Tab was introduced as the company’s first diet drink in 1963. Haney said that introduction signaled another change in the direction of the company as healthier options were offered. “There was Tab initially, then Diet Coke and now the zeros,” Haney said. “Those have followed trends of the world. Who would have thought about bottled water? My great-grandfather is probably rolling over, not believing they’re selling that by-product, because that’s what it was.” The company is in a unique position, Haney said, because it maintains the flexibility to make local decisions while still partnering with an internationally known brand — according to Interbrand, No. 3 on the Best SEE Coca-Cola, PAGE 6I
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Industry the lufkin news
From two brothers to 6,000 employees
Brookshire Brothers continues to grow with gifts and talents of employees who share ownership By STEVE KNIGHT The Lufkin News
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tarted by two brothers, Austin and Tom Brookshire, the first Brookshire Brothers store opened near the Angelina County Courthouse in Lufkin on Sept. 21, 1921. So many people would stop in front of the store in those early days to exchange stories, get the latest gossip and visit, the street became known as “Spit and Whittle.” More and more family members got in on the new company, including several cousins and other friends. In 1928, they decided to form a group with the goal of making Brookshire Brothers a strong regional company. There were soon 33 Brookshire Brothers stores in East Texas, but in 1929, Wood Brookshire and a cousin,
“The company started in the ’20s, then the Brookshire family was gracious enough at the time of retirement to sell the company to their employees, many of whom had worked for the company for 30, 40, approaching 50 years. Those values that they had are still here.”
W.A. Brookshire, withdrew from the company, taking four stores in Tyler with them and establishing the Brookshire Grocery Company. The companies have operated separately ever since. The company entered the wholesale trade business selling to other stores in 1952 with the purchase of the Moore Grocery and Lufkin Produce Company, which were in a building on the north side of the courthouse square in Lufkin. Brookshire Brothers moved to Lufkin’s west loop in 1968 after building a facility that Jerry Johnson would be its home for about 10 President and CEO of Brookshire years until the company purBrothers, chased a parcel of land on the north loop. A warehouse and corporate office were built on the site where it continues operation today. STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News The sons of Austin Brook- From left, Russ Reeder, district director, Jerry Johnson, president and CEO, and Ricky Sammons, transportation manager, stand in SEE Brookshire Brothers, PAGE 8I Brookshire Brothers’ warehouse facility in Lufkin.
Angelina America Continued from Page 2I
“My dad made all the investments and necessary measures to get started,” Hunter said. “We started off with one little machine welding 10 to 20 blades per week and now we’re got three machines that weld 900 blades per week.” That company in Iowa, Hansaloy Corporation, decided to get out of the band saw business in 2006. Angelina American bought them out. “Monte went there, did an inventory, bought one of their machines, bought some of their cutting machines, and we gained all of their customers and their distributors,” Hunter said. “That’s one of the things that helped us expand even further. After 2006, we did an almost 180-degree turn in that we stopped selling all of the cutting tools, the inserts, drill bits and such, and focused primarily on making the saw blades.” The business began to grow, Hunter said, and soon outgrew its 5,000-square-foot building on the west side of Lufkin. The company expanded its building by 2,000 square feet, and the next
year expanded another 2,000 square feet but still found itself cramped for space. Hunter estimated that the company was growing 30 percent annually in sales. With new machinery and equipment on the way, the company had to make a move. It approached the Lufkin economic development team and Angelina College for help. “They put some things together,” Hunter said. “We had some options to move our business closer to Houston where most of our customers are. They made it lucrative for us to stay in Lufkin. We were happy about that because Lufkin is our hometown. I have two small children, and I would much rather raise them here.” Jim Wehmeier, former director of economic development for the city of Lufkin, said in a previous Lufkin News story that the tax abatement agreement with Angelina American forgave taxes only on new value created by the expansion, adding 10 percent of the tax values coming in each year for the first seven years with 100 percent coming in during the eighth year. The com-
pany then built its own facility in Southpark. According to Wehmeier, the impact of the project would increase the current taxable value by $900,000, retain current jobs paying a minimum wage of $14.50 an hour plus benefits, create new jobs, and increase production and sales. With its 16,000-square-foot climate-controlled facility occupied since May 2012, the company boasts 10 full-time employees and two outside sales employees based in Houston. The facility is kept at a constant 72 degrees. “The city quoted this fouracre piece of land for us,” Hunter said. “The price was good and the contractor’s bid for the building was good, and we took off. Everything fit together. It was meant to be.” Hunter said one of the biggest changes in recent years is the demand of quality versus quantity. The Eberlybrand blades fit that need, he said. Another change: enormous growth. “As we strive to take care of our customers and put the best product we can as much as possible, we’ve seen growth,” he said. “I think we’re looking at another
100 percent growth in the 10 years. Some of the business deals we have going right now, we’re probably gaining five new customers a month.” The company also has new distributors in Oklahoma City and Lafayette, La., who sell the product to their customers in their territories. “The economy has seemed strong, at least for our business,” he said. “We had a great 2013, and I’m looking for 30 percent growth by 2015. It’s doable. We couldn’t be happier to be here in Lufkin, and to be one of the few manufacturing facilities in Lufkin, we’re really proud of it.” Steve Knight’s email address is sknight@lufkindailynews.com.
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Coca-Cola Continued from Page 3I Global Brands 2013 list. “We can do things locally that we are tied to and mean something to us — non-profit groups we can support — but we are also privy to the knowledge and experience from the Coca-Cola Company and Dr Pepper,” Haney said. “We can pull things from them, but we’re also flexible in what we want to do here locally.” Watkins said he attributes the company’s success to the family’s ownership and vision. “They think about this company, and it’s not what’s best for us in 2014, it’s best for us for the next several years — what we need to do to take advantage of those benefits (from Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper),” Watkins said. “We have access to some of the best and brightest in the industry with Coke and Dr Pepper, yet we’re not encumbered by corporate policies, procedures and policies that don’t make sense in our market. It’s definitely long-term and strategic — not what we can do today.” The company will continue to evolve, Watkins said. The next product addition to the Coca-Cola family: drops, which are flavor enhancers for water. “We’ll continue to see nontraditional beverages,” he said. “Drops are really coming front and center. We’re rolling out this year in addition to Dasani drops and Powerade drops, Minute Main drops, Fuze tea drops and vitaminwater drops. Those are really catching on. The Dasani drops have been wildly successful. That sort of product evolution will continue and would probably be the highlight and the most prominent thing that I would see over the next 25 years.” Steve Knight’s email address is sknight@lufkindailynews.com.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Industry Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Dolphin Services and Chemicals, LLC
By STEVE KNIGHT The Lufkin News
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entrifuges use centrifugal force — the force from spinning that moves things away from the center — to separate liquids with different weights, according to vocabulary.com. Scientists use centrifuges to separate blood cells from plasma cells. Washing machines spin clothes to get the water out of them. A Lufkin company uses the same type of process for the industrial, petrochemical and exploration and production markets. Dolphin Services and Chemicals, LLC operates at a facility in the Southpark Industrial Park in Lufkin, where 30 full-time employees design and manufacture centrifuges for refineries to reduce or eliminate their hazardous and non-hazardous waste streams. Partners Lee Cooke, Michael Kooper and Michael Windsor founded the company in October 2010. For Windsor, who serves as president and CEO, the journey began in 1986 when he founded East Texas Oil Products in Lufkin, specializing in producing road base materials in Angelina and Nacodoches counties. That was quickly followed in 1987 with Windsor founding Inland Products. Based in Kilgore, the company specialized in producing liquid asphalts and road base materials in East Texas. The focus quickly became recovering crude oil from waste streams associated with exploration and production. “I was handling petroleum waste streams, working at trying to recycle petroleum waste streams, starting out with asphalts,” Windsor said. “Then that got into crude oil sludges and crude oil tank bottoms. In the early years, I was trying to figure out how to separate solids from petroleum waste streams, to recover the valuable oil, the crude oil and any other problems.” By 1991, Inland Products had become one of the largest and most comprehensive crude oil reclamation companies operating in the United States, accepting crude oil sludge from major oil companies across the country. Inland Products merged with publicly held TransAmerican Waste Industries in 1992. Windsor met Cooke, a consultant in oil reclamation and recovery based in Corpus Christi, and Kooper, a German engineer working with a large European centrifuge manufacturer. They were trying to do the same thing — develop a three-phase separation system for the petroleum waste industry. “We got to talking about how we were trying to separate those waste streams — separating the water and solids out of the waste streams so we could recover the oil,” Windsor said. “Michael said we could do that mechanically, which would be a huge technology improvement in this industry. We started working together — all independent, but working together. In the early ’90s, Michael developed a centrifuge for us to try. We took the centrifuge that he rebuilt — none of us had any money — and made a threephase system where it would separate water, oil and solids in one single pass.”
Co-founders boast more than 20 years experience in reducing petroleum waste streams
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
Above: Michael Windsor, president and CEO of Dolphin Services and Chemicals, LLC, stands beside a centrifuge at the company’s facility in Lufkin. Left: Dolphin Service employee Jose Orta works on a rotating assembly of a centrifuge at the company’s facility in Lufkin. He said the company grew exceptionally fast from 1995 until 2002, when Veolia Water North American acquired the company in an effort to solidify its position in the refinery waste business. The three partners came together again in 2010 to form Dolphin Services with its home in Lufkin. “Our business model with Dolphin was not to be an operational group, but to be more of an engineering consulting management group, “ Windsor said. “We know petroleum waste
streams from the drilling, all the way to the production and all the way to the refineries. Any waste stream that’s associated with the petroleum industry from the exploration and production sector and the refining sector, we understand. We understand the emulsions. We understand the waste. We understand how to separate it, and that’s all we’ve done for the last 20-something years in the business. They call us with a problem, and what we do is look at their problem. We design a process that reduces the waste by separating it. We separate it where they can take their water and come up with a more economic disposal for the water.” Almost all of the processes, except thermal processes, use the centrifuge technology, Windsor said. The company also has the ability to remotely monitor its centrifuges anywhere in the world. “We’ve got our centrifuge technology where it’s pretty fascinating,” he said. “We’ve come a long ways with what we can do. We have technology, but our focus has always been on petroleum. We have blinders on when it comes to that. Our business model is to design, process, install. They operate it; we consult, train, manage and lease the total process to them. We didn’t realize how big the (exploration and production) side of it is.” The company’s clients include representatives of some of the largest oil and waste management companies in the country. Many clients visit the Dolphin facility in Lufkin, Windsor said. During the week of the visit for this story, clients from Houston, Jacksonville, Miss., and New Orleans were scheduled to visit the facility. “I’ve been very surprised,” Windsor said. “Every week, we’re bringing people to Lufkin. We probably average a hotel night a week for people coming to visit us and stay. I don’t think it’s just Lufkin. I think people just like getting out of Houston or New Orleans and seeing what we do.” Steve Knight’s email address is sknight@lufkindailynews.com.
“Any waste stream that’s associated with the petroleum industry from the exploration and production sector and the refining sector, we understand.” Michael Windsor
Dolphin Services and Chemicals, LLC president and ceo
Centrifuges have been around a long time, Windsor said, from wastewater plants to separating pulp from grapes at wineries, but it wasn’t a popular technology to use in the ’80s and ’90s. “We took an old technology and redesigned it — changed from carbon steel to stainless steel and changed the lengths of it,” he said. “We re-engineered it for the petroleum industry. Michael was the one working on that.” Windsor said he used money from the TransAmerican sale to reinvest it in the new technology. “Between ’92 and ’95, we actually built a new one from scratch,” he said. “The first one we built had so much vibra-
tion, we had to chain it into the ground to keep from moving. We developed the first threephase centrifuge ever installed in a U.S. refinery.” That first centrifuge was installed at the Flint Hills refinery in Corpus Christi in 1995. That same year, the three men founded MCS Technologies, LLC with corporate headquarters in Houston and operations based out of Corpus Christi. The company specialized in designing, building and operating waste recovery plants in petroleum refineries. “The technology was so much more advanced than the current refinery waste technology out there that it quickly spread to the refineries,” Windsor said.
Providing quality products and service to East Texas for over 60 years. Concrete Plant: 936-634-3341 Supplies Store: 936-634-6564
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Industry the lufkin news
Brookshire Brothers Continued from Page 6I
I NG T A
State Supported Living Center, The Mosaic Center, Friends of the Ellen Trout Zoo, Sarah’s Hope, the East Texas Alliance for Children-Harold’s House, Junior Achievement of East Texas, American Cancer Society/Pineywoods Cattle Barons Gala, Friends of Blue Hole, Alzheimer’s Association-Capital of Texas Chapter, Alzheimer’s Association-Southeast Texas/ Houston Chapter and the Angelina Arts Alliance. “I don’t know a family in need that these organizations don’t serve,” Johnson said. Company spokesperson Sally Alvis agreed that the employee stock ownership plan was a significant change in the direction of the company. “Instead of having a handful of owners, you have 6,000 owners,” Alvis said. “With that ownership comes a huge investment. When all these people who work in the warehouse, data center or the stores, bring their gifts and talents to this organization, it also benefits them because they are the owners. It’s a different concept in ownership. We’re not a Fortune 500 company. We’re owned by the people who work for the company.” After the employees gained ownership, the company focused on modernizing and improving their stores. Brookshire Brothers continues to grow today. In 2007, the company merged with Lufkin-based Polk Oil Co., which included its fuel distribution business and 30 convenience stores. Brookshire Brothers officials announced earlier this year that it planned to acquire David’s Supermarkets, a Grandview-based familyowned grocery store chain with 25 stores in north central Texas. “We are focused on growth and service to the community,” Johnson said. “We going to continue to grow.” Brookshire Brothers has 123 active and operating retail outlets including grocery stores, convenience stores, freestanding pharmacy, tobacco and petro locations with two new stores planned this year.
A look back at Brookshire Brothers
Steve Knight’s email address is sknight@lufkindailynews.com.
OUR
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shire — Eugene, Oscar and R.A. — took over the reins of the company when Lee Brookshire retired as president of the newly incorporated chain in 1966. The company experienced growth and diversification during this time, expanding to 69 stores in East Texas and the western part of Louisiana and introducing new formats — Budget Chopper and B&B Foods. The company further diversified in 1991, opening its first gas station on the parking lot of one of its supermarkets. Brookshire Brothers is now one of the world’s leading retail distributors of Conoco Phillips-branded products. Tobacco Barn was born in 1997, as the company sought convenient distribution of tobacco products. The company opened its first combined gas station and Tobacco Barn in 1999. The year 1999 also saw a significant change in the company’s direction, as an ownership transfer was conducted. An employee stock ownership plan was developed by the three retiring brothers, allowing the family to sell the company to its employees. Jerry Johnson, president and CEO of Brookshire Brothers, considers that decision the most significant in the long history of the company. “I think the core values that we have today were shared by our ancestors,” Johnson said. “The company started in the ’20s, then the Brookshire family was gracious enough at the time of retirement to sell the company to their employees, many of whom had worked for the company for 30, 40, approaching 50 years. Those values that they had are still here.” Those core values, he said, also include giving back to the community through the Brookshire Brothers Charitable Foundation, which recognized 12 nonprofit organizations during a presentation in January at the company’s distribution center in Lufkin. Recipients of checks totaling $110,000 included the Boys and Girls Clubs of Deep East Texas, the Volunteer Services Council at the Lufkin
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the lufkin news Then and Now: South Lufkin Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Progress Angelina County
Then&Now South Lufkin
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
The improved U.S. 59 at Loop 287 is shown. This project involved building northbound and southbound frontage roads from Loop 287, widening and raising the connecting Whitehouse/Daniel McCall underpass bridge, and removing, replacing and widening the Tulane Drive/Loop 287 underpass bridge.
Inside this section Bobby Spencer.................2J South Lufkin growth........3J U.S. 59 naturalization.....4J
Mall Walkers....................5J Chick-fil-A Lufkin Mall....5J The Spotted Zebra...........6J
Texans Barbershop..........7J Beall’s renovations..........7J Changes at AC.................8J
U.S. Highway 59 project paving the way for thriving businesses By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
“I think as far as mobility, it was a very successful project. I think it really enhanced safety for those wanting to access those businesses.”
I
n today’s society, people want to get where they want to go as quickly as possible. It’s the job of the Texas Department of Transportation to facilitate that — and to get them there safely — but there’s a side effect of successful transportation systems: successful business. In Lufkin, TxDOT’s projects in the area around U.S. Highway 59 south and Loop 287 have helped both the flow of traffic and retail business. Sam Skrehot, advanced planning engineer, Jesse Sisco, Lufkin area engineer, and Kathi White, public information officer for the Texas Department of Transportation, who all played key roles in the project, sat down to discuss the process behind the ongoing roadwork. Construction on the U.S. 59 at Loop 287 project involved building northbound and southbound frontage roads from Loop 287, widening and raising the connecting Whitehouse/ Daniel McCall underpass bridge, and removing, replacing and widening the Tulane Drive/Loop 287 underpass bridge. White said years of planning went into completing the 59/Loop 287 project, but actual construction began between 2008-10. The main cause for the expansion project was to keep mobility moving and relieve congestion in the area. Northbound traffic heading to the east loop was an area of concern, Skrehot said. In the beginning of the project, when the state bought the right-of-way for the loop in the 1960s, Highway 59 was just an intersection, he said. “The lanes split out, and everybody turned left to go to Houston and people turned right to go north on the loop,” he said. In the ’80s, Skrehot said, he worked on the first phase, in which TxDOT dug out the underpass beneath Timberland and Tulane drives. The second phase was the southbound connector completed later in that decade. “And the third phase,” the one Sisco engineered, “was the northbound connector and additional frontage roads and new concrete pavement. It was an overhaul. It wasn’t just addressing a few little issues. It was addressing quite a bit,” Skrehot said. In the third phase of construction, Sisco said, TxDOT organized a drainage system, implementing thousands of feet of storm sewer along with vertical clearances over Whitehouse Drive, rais
Jesse Sisco
Jesse Sisco
Texas Department of Transportation Lufkin area engineer
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
This image shows some of the numerous shops and restaurants of the South Loop Crossing shopping center. These businesses and many others benefit from the safer access and improvements from the U.S. Highway 59 South at Loop 287 projects.
ing the Whitehouse bridge and adding the frontage roads for better business access and traffic circulation. “It made it a whole lot safer to get to these businesses because the frontage roads are for the access to adjacent property,” Sisco said. “The main lanes are for mobility, to keep people moving.” Sisco said TxDOT created a diamond interchange between Whitehouse Drive bridge, improving the ramp system and adding the northbound and southbound direct connect bridge, one of the biggest of the city. But the project was met with community concern, particularly from business owners in South Lufkin who had to give up part or all of their property to make way for the roadway. About $38 million — the bulk paid by the state — went to purchase the parcels of right-ofway, White said. “A lot of businesses were impacted, and some of them no longer exist,” she said. “I think it’s important to note we did work with the businesses and tried to work with them if they needed to relocate, whatever their decisions were, to help them through the process.” Some of the businesses lost or relocated during the 59 project were Dairy Queen, Casa Ole (which used to be the Cattleman’s, but then merged with another restaurant), Cavanaugh’s Jewelry, Hollywood Video, Shrimp Boat Manny’s, Quik Lube, Arby’s, Whataburger and Donovan Realty. Skrehot said each parcel was different, that nothing was cookie-cutter or uniform during the process. “Sometimes it’s just a few parking places at a hotel. It can affect them tremendously or not at all; it just depends,” he said. TxDOT offered assistance or compensation for businesses affected by the land acquisition. Owners could take their claims to court and discuss counteroffers and settlements for the property acquisition, but eventually, the businesses had to make way for the big project. “I think, because it is local and we know that we’re impacting the businesses, I know TxDOT did work really hard with all of the businesses during that process,” White said. “I think it ended up being a partnership. It had to be, between the business community and TxDOT and even the contractor because they really became a part of the community during their journey there.” SEE U.S. 59 south, PAGE 6J
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A man of stability
By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: South LUfkin the lufkin news
obby Spencer is a man of stability. He’s been married more than 38 years to the same woman, served at the same church since 1981 and has worked as a sales associate at Sears in Lufkin Mall for more than 30 years. “When I look back, I think, that’s when I realize that I’ve been here a long time, when kids grow up and are married and have their children,” Spencer said. “I realize I’ve been here a long time.” Spencer sat down for an interview to reflect on the changes he’s seen and the memories of his life in Lufkin. He was a member of the original Sears staff when Lufkin Mall opened in February 1980. He was 22. “I wanted to transfer closer to Nacogdoches. That’s where my mom lived, and she was getting older,” Spencer said. “So I wanted to come back to this area.” When he started working in Lufkin, the mall had Sears, Beall’s and JC Penney as its anchor stores as well as Corrigan’s, Gordon’s jewelry and Corn Dog 7. The mall also had a drug store at the time. Spencer said Lufkin Mall has always tried to appeal to the families of this community with a balance of small businesses and national retailers. “We saw a lot more name brand stores coming from the beginning,” he said, “and we just saw a transformation from smaller stores and more larger name brand stores.” Lufkin Mall opened across the street from the Angelina Mall, where Kmart remains today. Spencer said the malls were in a bit of a turf war over customers, but Lufkin Mall was the clear favorite after it opened its doors. “The Lufkin Mall, when it came in being a walk-through, it was family-oriented and people could come in and just bring the whole family and look at different things. Adults and the chil-
Local man Bobby Spencer has been loyal Sears employee for more than three decades
Sales associates spent time with customers discussing family life and school along with electronics. And Spencer followed up with customers with business cards and friendly phone calls home instead of email. “Now I find, today, with the computers and everything, online shopping, our customers are more informed than they once were,” Spencer said. “So they come in with more knowledge than they have
“I’m very grateful to the Lord for giving me favor with Sears Roebuck. The state of Texas is an at-will state, and when a company keeps you this long, that’s a blessing.” Bobby Spencer
Sears sales associate
KELSEY SAMUELS/The Lufkin News
Sales associate Bobby Spencer is pictured inside Sears. Spencer has been a valued employee at the store for more than 30 years. dren, they had games where the kid could participate in while the parents were shopping — and, of course, the movie theater. Families would come in for that. And we just thought we were uptown,” he said, laughing heartily. “When a mall like that came in compared to the Angelina Mall, it just made us feel real ‘citified.’ It was just really neat. It was just, ‘Wow, Lufkin, Texas, get’s something like that.’”
Spencer said Lufkin Mall’s family atmosphere has been key to its lasting success. He said the mall has something for people of all ages. “We’ve got two colleges within 30 minutes of each other — Angelina College and Stephen F. Austin — and it appeals to the younger crowd, yet with the mall we still have some of the seniors, our more mature seniors that have always shopped Sears, JC Penney and Beall’s.
We’ve held to those people, yet we’ve attracted younger crowds with some of the more casual shops in the mall.” Despite his long history with Sears, Spencer has maintained his job as sales associate instead of vying for higher positions. “I’ve always enjoyed sales, because I’m a pastor, so sales has worked good with me being a pastor,” he said. “Rather than go into management, I’ve just always liked sales, had a passion
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for sales. So I’ve stuck with that. But I’ve seen things go from the old way of doing things to the computer generation.” During his time at Lufkin Mall, Spencer’s job description has vastly changed with the times. When he first arrived, he said, customer service was all about interpersonal, face-toface interactions with customers. To learn about new products at Sears, customers went to Spencer instead of Google.
had in the past, whereas they would come to us because they knew we were knowledgeable salespeople. They looked to us to inform them, and now that they have computers, they can shop online. Now they come in with their papers and pads and their sheets in their hands and they’re more informed.” For some, in-store shopping has become more of a formality. Some customers “just come for those last-minute things and to just look at it and feel it and hold the grate and look at how the design is in person,” Spencer said. “It’s not as much interaction as SEE Spencer, PAGE 6J
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the lufkin news Then and Now: South Lufkin Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Watching South Lufkin grow By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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nlike most other towns in the Texas Forest Country, Lufkin has designated itself as a retail hot spot, grossing billions in annual sales. South Lufkin has become the biggest piece of Lufkin’s modern retail persona, but it wasn’t always like that. Jerry Huffman, president and CEO of the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce, said he came to Lufkin in 1974 and has worked here for most of the 40 years since. In a board room of The Chamber, a floor-to ceiling, black-and-white aerial photo of Lufkin in 1982 stands on the wall. The photo captures forestland, neighborhoods and a simple Lufkin 30 years ago. While looking at the photo, Huffman was able to remember what South Lufkin was when he first arrived and how it has changed over the years. Between where the Fashion District and Lowe’s are now, he said, “It was mostly
STEVE KNIGHT/The Lufkin News
This image shows some of the numerous shops of the SouthLoop Crossing shopping center. According to president and CEO of the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce, Jerry Huffman, the growth in retail businesses was a result of a new census division called “micropolitan areas” created in 2000 by the Department of Commerce. The city of Lufkin became one of the top micropolitan areas in the State of Texas, and major retailers began opening stores here.
“When you take Angelina County and the eight contiguous counties you’re looking at a market of 350,000 to 400,000 people. There’s lots of folks out there in those woods.” Jerry Huffman
President and CEO of the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce
forest.” In 1972, Huffman said, the big area for shopping was Angelina Mall, an enclosed shopping center anchored by Woolco, which is now Kmart, and Clark’s Department Store. When the Lufkin Mall opened across the street in 1980, he said, “It had a huge reception, and everybody in the community wanted to go. It was the place to be.” Huffman said the success of Lufkin Mall created a draw for retail business in the area. Because of the overwhelming response from Lufkin and its neighboring communities, he said, Lufkin began to attract bigger brands and more wellknown retailers. “(Lufkin Mall) stepped us up a notch,” Huffman said. “All of a sudden, we became a small city instead of a little rural East Texas town. We grew up; we started growing. And the reason this corridor is so much oriented to retail is because this is where the traffic is.” In the 1980s, he said, South Lufkin had a handful of businesses; there were Angelina Mall and Lufkin Mall, then the Holiday Inn which later became the Ramada Inn across the street. On that corner, he said, the hotel later became Roadway Inn and then Budget Inn, in what is now the vacant corner of Tulane and South Medford drives, near the current-day Applebee’s. The Budget Inn sign still stands. Though Lufkin Mall had a virtual monopoly on Lufkin retail, South Lufkin’s transformation for business and development truly expanded after the 2000 Census.
“All the retail that’s happened here and across here,” he said, pointing to the Southloop Crossing businesses along U.S. Highway 59, “has happened since 2000.” “In 2000, after the census was done, the Department of Commerce created a new census division called ‘a micropolitan area.’ The micropolitan area is a community of 50,000 or less. And when they did that, we became one of the top micropolitan areas in the state of Texas. And when that happened, all the major retailers said, ‘There must be a market there.’ So that’s when all these stores happened.” Huffman said one of the tough times the city has had in promoting Lufkin, particularly from a retail standpoint, was when retailers and businesses would solely look at Lufkin as a little town of only 35,000 people. “But when you take Angelina County and the eight contiguous counties,” he said, “you’re looking at a market of 350,000 to 400,000 people. There’s lots of folks out there in those woods.” Huffman said retail follows retail, so the commitment of one business can attract other big businesses, which is why anytime a community has a Lowe’s, a Home Depot is not too far away, he said. It’s true for Houston and its true for Lufkin, he said. “Our goal, as a community, it to draw those people here for retail, for medical, for government office,” he said. Tens of thousands of cars travel through the Loop 287 and U.S. Highway 59 intersection on a daily basis for work,
shopping, dining or medical care, Huffman said, and recent developments have presented Lufkin as more than a forest town, but also a commercial destination. “All this has done is solidify our position as a regional draw for retail. This has become ‘coming to town’ for a lot of people in a 50-mile radius. Where Livingston used to go to Houston, now they’re coming here. Where Jasper went to Beaumont, they’ll be coming here because we have a lot of opportunity now,” Huffman said. “Anybody that works for a community whose main job is to help make it grow, which is what the chamber of commerce is all about, you love to see it grow.” Former Lufkin mayor Jack Gorden led the city during several years of growth and expansion. During his service as mayor, from 2006-12, “It was certainly very exciting, and we have known for years that Lufkin was the center of about at least a 250,000 population area,” he said, “and most of the 250,000 people came to Lufkin to shop, for their medical services, to buy a car — you name it, they came.” As the city continues to grow and change, Lufkin has begun to attract lots of outof-town guests. “If you go in a restaurant, and it wasn’t that many years ago, you’d go and you’d know a number of people in there. Today, you go to all these restaurants, you don’t know anybody,” Gorden said. “They’re all people from out of town.” In the past five years,
Lufkin has surpassed the billion-dollar mark of local sales, receiving approximately twice as much as Nacogdoches in annual retail sales, Gorden said. Since Lufkin has begun to rely heavily on retail sales tax to operate the city, out-oftown shopping has become crucial to its growth, Gorden said. “The south loop has essentially remade Lufkin into the city it is today,” he said.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: South LUfkin the lufkin news
‘Urban forest’
U.S. 59 naturalization and reforestation project creates more welcoming landscape for the city of Lufkin By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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hen travelers enter Lufkin, a simulated slab of timber greets them, “Welcome to Lufkin.” A pine tree represents the “i” in Lufkin, towering over the other letters just as the pines and cypresses tower over the city. Lufkin was founded on the forestry industry, but as time has passed, East Texas has modernized with it. Though our city is void of skyscrapers and high rises, the development of Lufkin’s South Lufkin retail area has been a step forward for the city. Acres of forest land have been cleared to make way for the Garden District, Fashion District, Walmart Supercenter and other businesses along the intersection of U.S. Highway 59 and Loop 287. But, however modernized the city may become, it will always be a forest town at heart. In 2008, during the completion of the U.S. Highway 59 project, the Temple Foundation sought to restore greenery to the concrete overpasses and roadways of the new South Lufkin. Buddy Temple, whose family founded the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, said he and his wife Ellen came up with the idea to do some heavy landscaping around the new roadways and frontage roads during the time when the Texas Department of Transportation was finishing the highway project. After seeing the landscaping done in Houston on its highways, he said, he and his wife took the idea to the foundation board, which agreed that it was a great project. “I think it presents a fairly nice face for Lufkin for people driving through,” Temple said. “I enjoy seeing it every time I drive through, and seeing all those trees.” Jack Gorden, former Lufkin mayor, said, “There’s been a movement in Lufkin for several years to make all the citizens of East Texas more aware of the ecosystem that we have here,” Gorden said. “And that Temple Foundation — it’s kind of hard to quantify, but you can hardly go two blocks without running into something that they had done.” Since the Temple Foundation’s mission lends itself to
conserving and protecting East Texas’ natural amenities, it was a natural marriage for it to be involved in the U.S. 59 project. Gorden said the idea for the tree grant was to embellish Lufkin’s main entrance from Houston with a nod to forestry. “It’s why people came here in the first place,” Gorden said. “The economy has certainly diversified where that is not the main way people make a living, but it’s certainly very important.” He said the landscaping of the 59 entryway was meant to be an explosion of trees and foliage — “an urban forest” in which businesses are complemented by the natural lay of the forest. Instead of only bare concrete structures, the area has texture and depth that’s enhanced by the intrinsic native plants of East Texas. “As people drive into Lufkin, we want to give them a sense of how much we appreciate all this forest, and as time goes on and those things get bigger and bigger, it’s going to be magic,” Gorden said. “And the driving force behind that in Lufkin, there’s no two ways about it, is Mr. and Mrs. Temple, Buddy and Ellen Temple.” Buddy Zeagler, executive director for the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, said the project began in March 2010 near the completion of the Southloop Crossing area. “This idea came up as the construction on the loop overpass was nearing completion, and although it’s desirable and important in its function, due to the nature of the highways and intersections, it was sort of sterile in its appearance. It was all concrete,” Zeagler said. “Buddy Temple and the foundation’s trustees wanted to add more of a natural resource appearance to that section of the highways,” Zeagler said. “They wanted to highlight the beauty of the native grasses and greens of our area,” said Laura Squiers, deputy executive director for the Temple Foundation. The foundation provided the city of Lufkin with a $615,000 grant to plant trees, shrubs and grasses along the 59 entrance to Lufkin and the
File photo
This 2010 photo shows U.S. 59 before it benefitted from funds for the naturalization and reforestation project. A $615,000 grant from the T.L.L. Temple Foundation supplemented the Texas Department of Transportation’s $500,000 in funds that were used to landscape the area.
“I think the Temple family has always taken it as a personal responsibility to preserve the natural resources of this area because the natural resources have given so much to the community and to business. So, in turn, the community has to give back and preserve the resources.” Laura Squiers
Deputy executive director for the Temple Foundation
northbound and southbound sides of Loop 287. Since the intersection of Highway 59 and Loop 287 is the main traffic artery into Lufkin, Zeagler said, “Buddy Temple felt like there was sufficient frontage land available where trees and shrubs could be planted to enhance the natural appearance of that major highway and traffic interchange.” The area of the planting extended from the Whitehouse overpass on 59 and along Loop 287 from Ashley Furniture on the left to the Tulane overpass on the right. The project included planting approximately 3,000 trees and 2,000 native shrubs and small understory trees, along with 6,000 native grasses and understory shrubs, in that south Lufkin corridor. The grant went toward site/ soil preparation, landscaping and plant materials, as well as an irrigation system. Zeagler said irrigation was an important component in keeping the trees hydrated during dry spells and droughts because a similar landscaping project in Houston lost almost all of its trees during the dry 2010 summer without it. “In order for these trees and shrubs to get established, they would need to be irrigated during dry periods for the first two or three years so that their root systems could get established,” he said. “The reason that the survival rate of our initial planting was so successful was due to his irrigation component that we did, and it paid off. It paid off in dividends.” The summer drought in 2010 was one of Lufkin’s driest, hot-
test summers that Squiers and Zeagler said they could remember, and that most of the trees likely would not have survived without the irrigation system in place. Only about 5 percent of the trees didn’t survive their transplants. One of the requirements of the Temple Foundation’s involvement was that the trees, shrubs and grasses used in the project all be native plants to this area, like evergreens, cypresses, pine trees, oak tree varieties and wax myrtle shrubs, among others.
Zeagler said the planting project reflects, in a more traditional sense, the legacy of the Temple family, dating to the 20th century when T.L.L. Temple established a legacy of forest conservation and preserving natural resources. As the city continues to grow, the Temple Foundation has continued to keep Lufkin connected with its forestry history. Squiers said the South Lufkin area has been a reflection of Lufkin’s bright future: modern progress with a hand
in the past. “You see marvels of engineering paired with the beauty of greenscape and nature and the environment,” she said. “I think the Temple family has always taken it as a personal responsibility to preserve the natural resources of this area because the natural resources have given so much to the community and to business. So, in turn, the community has to give back and preserve the resources.” Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
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East Texas’ Most Unique Antique Shop Wishing Well Antiques & Gifts is in its thirty-eighth year of business in Lufkin. The store began in 1976 as a small downtown antique shop. In 1980, owners Abb and Joann Roquemore relocated the business to Lufkin’s West Loop 287. Over the years, the shop has expanded. It now occupies over 10,000 square feet and is really more like four shops in one. It is still an antique shop, with Joann traveling to England, Europe and all over the United States, each year to personally select antiques for the store. The shop is also one of the area’s largest and
finest gift shops, with merchandise from every corner of the globe. And the Wishing Well is a year round holiday store, featuring each special holiday throughout the year. In addition, the store is now a bridal and baby registry, offering a huge variety of gifts for the bride, groom, wedding party and baby. Contact us before your shower so we can have plenty of stock in your special selections. In 1999 the Roquemore’s bought the 12,000 square foot warehouse downtown at the corner of Frank and
Herndon. The warehouse has an even larger selection of English, European, country and architectural antiques. The warehouse is open by appointment or on special sale dates. In January 2014, one of Lufkin’s leading floral designers Donna Dorman opened her floral boutique in the Wishing Well. Donna has over 30 years in the floral industry specializing in weddings and home decor. Loyal customers travel from far and near to enjoy this wonderful shopping experience. Friendly sales staff can help you find the perfect gift for a loved one.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: South Lufkin Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Working her way up The Mall
Owner of Chick-fil-A Lufkin Mall location, Sarah Sheridan, started working career with company, worked up to ownership By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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arah Sheridan, owner/ operator of the Chick-filA in the Lufkin Mall, said she got her first job with the restaurant in 2001. “I was in high school, and my best friend worked for Chick-filA,” she said. She said she’d never eaten at Chick-fil-A, nor even heard of Chick-fil-A, but she got the job so she could be with her friends, “and I loved that it was more about the people than the business.” Three years ago, Sheridan started working for corporate, running company-operated stores in North Carolina, Mississippi, Amarillo, Baytown and San Antonio until she was offered the Lufkin location in December 2012. Trying to become an operator for Chick-fil-A was not an easy process, Sheridan said. “It’s a really long, hard journey, and (Chick-fil-A gets) thousands of applicants every year and they only select 100, at the most.” She said being selected owner/operator has “a lot to do with your chemistry and ‘Will you fit into the community?’ I can tell you, I wouldn’t fit into a big city. I wouldn’t thrive there; I wouldn’t be happy.” When Sheridan was selected as owner for Lufkin, she said meshing well with a community was integral to growing the brand. “I love the community here,” Sheridan said. “I’m from a big town, so me and my husband always wanted to live in a smaller city and (Lufkin) literally fit everything we wanted. It’s been amazing — the community, the people. It has a big-town feeling, but everyone knows each other and it’s a very close-knit community. As owner and operator,
Walkers
KELSEY SAMUELS/The Lufkin News
Sarah Sheridan, center, owner of Chick-fil-A Lufkin Mall location poses with her crew at the restaurant. Sheridan said she works to “ensure the daily operations of the store, the development of my team. Our focus is all about people, ‘How can we impact the lives of our guests and my fellow team members and help them develop and grow?’” “That’s our goal, just to try to have remarkable experiences for our guests,” she said. “How can I really pour into (employees) and help them develop and take those skills into the career that they’re going to have longterm?” She classified herself as a “hands-on leader” who puts lots of emphasis on leadership development in her team. “If anybody wants to learn how to lead a team, they’re more than able to do it, and I’ll pour into them how to do that,” she said. Whatever interests her team has, she said, she works to “utilize that and have them develop and grow in that area.” Since Sheridan has been with Chick-fil-A for almost 14 years,
she worked with many levels of the Chick-fil-A business, from team leader, manager, director and marketing. “I got to have my hand in everything, which is kind of what I want for my team. I want them to be able to experience everything they can while they’re here.” She said her varied career with Chick-fil-A helped her as a leader at her business because she better understands her team. “It helps a lot because I literally understand exactly what they’re going through,” she said. “I understand if they’re struggling in something because I’ve had those exact same struggles. I understand when they’re overwhelmed because they’re trying to do high school and work, because I’ve been there. I’ve done it with them.” She also has experienced budgeting for a small business and “how to control the food costs, how to do marketing successfully, how do we work
on making sure labor’s under control — a lot of the budgeting aspect that we’re able to really spend the money we want to and investing back into the community.” It’s been a little more than a year since Sheridan started working in Lufkin Mall, but she said she truly enjoys what she does. “The one thing I’ve learned is that if you love what you’re doing, you’ll never going to have to work a day in your life,” she said. “And I truly love what I’m doing and I want to pass that on to my team. When I grew up, my operator did that to me. She poured into me and she was like, ‘You can do this, you can reach this goal and this dream.’ I want to be able to do that for everybody else.” Sheridan’s story and energy has left an impact on her team. Fharid Reyes, a Lufkin High School senior, said he started working at Chick-fil-A about a year ago, shortly after SheriSEE Sheridan, PAGE 6J
community of local residents have given new meaning to making their rounds at the mall. At 8 a.m., when the doors open, the walkers come in. The men are dressed in overalls, starched jeans, collared shirts and working boots, the women in loose-fitted track pants, comfortable sneakers and workout jackets. They are the Lufkin Mall walkers, and over the years, they have become a community of people who have used walking in the mall — the inside perimeter of which equals about half a mile — as their primary means of exercise or daily activity. The mall walkers include men and women of all ages, but most of the morning walkers are retirees. Betty Anderson, Martha Alexander, Carolyn Hughes and Judy Carter are among the morning mall walkers. For 3045 minutes, the women walk the perimeter of the mall, discussing their lives, sharing the local chit-chat and exchanging stories. There are many reasons why they walk each morning. Charles Alexander, Martha’s husband, pointed to his head and said, “I walk to stay sharp up here.” Anderson said she walks because it “gets you out.” “It helps breathing, and it’s just good for you,” she said. Hughes said she began walking in the mornings a few months ago when Alexander and Anderson “forced me into coming.” Alexander said she started walking at the mall because “it doesn’t cost to walk at the mall. We walk whatever the weather outside.” Regardless of how, when or why they started walking, the Lufkin Mall walkers have become a community of people
KELSEY SAMUELS/The Lufkin News
A welcome sign for mall walkers is shown at the Lufkin Mall entrance. devoted to their health and wellness. The morning walkers are a casual, talkative bunch; they commonly exchange barbs or hold fragmented conversations as they pass each other near the cookie cart. The walkers are friends and strangers, some faster than others. But as they cross paths, Alexander and her friends hold mini-conversations, asking names once, then “How are you doing?” when they pass again. “Eventually, you start to know everybody,” Alexander said. She, Hughes and Carter walk at a slower pace, occasionally stopping for conversation, while Anderson keeps a faster pace than her friends. Alexander is a retired accountant and Hughes retired from the U.S. Forest Service and the Texas Forest Service. Aside from walking, Hughes said she regularly clogs at the Susan School of Dance. Before she began walking at the mall, Alexander said, “I didn’t have a lot of breath. I mean, I would get out of breath real quick.” Since walking, she said, she doesn’t get out of breath as much anymore. SEE Mall walkers, PAGE 7J
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: South LUfkin the lufkin news
Spotted Zebra offers unique products and atmosphere By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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ocated next to Mattress Giant off Loop 287 is The Spotted Zebra, a fashion boutique with clothes as trendy and unique as its unconventional mascot. Owner Deborah Hunt said the boutique was originally in the Fashion District until it moved to its 1,800-square-foot location in 2011. Hunt said she moved to the Garden District location because “I wanted my own door, plus I wanted to get on the highway where people can see me.” Since the move, the visibility and accessibly of the Spotted Zebra has contributed to the success of the business, she said. Sarah Ferguson, store manager, said the Spotted Zebra carries Wild Fox, Free People and O’Neill fashion brands, Lenny & Eva personalized jewelry and Dear John jeans along with exclusive brands like Vera Bradley merchandise and TOMS shoes. Vera Bradley handbags, purses, backpacks, wallets and wristlets feature bold, floral colors and patterns, and TOMS have become an international movement and a bold fashion statement because purchasing a pair of shoes helps provide shoes for someone in an underdeveloped county. The shop manages to carry a variety of merchandise without the store appearing cluttered or overloaded with merchandise. A section of the store is devoted to Vera Bradley’s festive, quilted backpacks, laptop covers, wallets, clutches and purses. Racks
Kelsey Samuels/The Lufkin News
Some cute clothing and accessories are shown at the Spotted Zebra located in the Garden District. of Wild Fox, Free People and O’Neills line the walls. The register was surrounded by Lenny and Eva accessories along with scarves, headbands, necklaces and bracelets, and the shoe area stocks several styles like boots, strappy sandals, wedges and textured riding boots, along with the TOMS. Ferguson said the store receives weekly shipments of merchandise, so there is always something new at the
Spotted Zebra. The fashions in stock stand out against the store’s vintage decor. By juxtaposing the fresh fashions against vintage accents like old-school theater seating in the shoe section, distressed wooden doors and panels, vintage bicycles and junkyard drive-in signs, the store looks vibrant without seeming overwhelming. “I like the old things,” Hunt
said. “Fashion is always a part of the past, so it all comes back around.” Most of the pieces displayed in the store came from area flea markets, Hunt said, giving it “that homey feel.” “I don’t want it to look like a traditional store,” she said. Suzy Jungmann of Lufkin said she has been a customer of The Spotted Zebra since it was located in the Fashion District.
And the journey was tough, White said, because when building roadways and highways, the facilities have to remain accessible to the public. “Years in advance, part of the plan was traffic control. We have to keep traffic moving through our construction zone, unlike somebody building a building where they’re just out there in a vacant lot,” Skrehot said. “We have to deal with the public using our facility while we’re under constructions.” White said TxDOT worked to keep the community informed on daily projects or traffic rerouting by submitting the information to The Lufkin News and keeping an open-door policy for business owners and the community. For businesses during those 15-18 months when the Tulane Drive bridge was closed, White
said, “It was difficult and very challenging for them to try to figure out how to keep their businesses going for such a long period. You could get to them; there was access. It was just, ‘Do people want to take the time to take that detour and go this way and that way?’” Despite the hardships of the project, the result has brought growth to the area. White said the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2010 was a great moment because it marked a new beginning. The fresh overpasses and sleek design have given South Lufkin a modern polish, different than other pockets of retail in the city. “In my opinion, what makes it look different is it’s built to freeway standards,” to handle the estimated 40,000 vehicles that travel through the city each day, Skrehot said. Because of
the freeway standard, he said, U.S. 59 is now large enough to be converted to an interstate, if and when that time comes. “I think as far as mobility, it was a very successful project,” Sisco said. “I think it really enhanced safety for those wanting to access those businesses.” Before the overhaul, trucks used to stack up for miles, Skrehot said, but now the free flow of traffic keeps both mobility on the main road and local circulation on the frontage roads. As a result of the completed highway project, the property value along U.S. 59 in South Lufkin has risen in the past years, making it some of the most expensive property in the city. “I think it’ll be interesting to see what that will look like in a couple years,” White said.
and talk to you.’ So I like that,” he said, smiling. “The wonderful thing is, in 30 years, I’ve seen children go from being born and little kids, graduate from high school, college, get married, have children, and they’ll come back and say, ‘I remember you when I was a kid,’ and that’s when I realize I’ve been here a long time.” When he reflects on his many years at Sears, he said, “It reminds me of my teachers that ,when I was in school, they would tell me, ‘Bobby, don’t be jumping around jobs.’ They’d say, ‘Get somewhere and stay and build something with a company,’ and I’ve done that. Yes, ma’am. I’ve done that,” he said. He said his relationships with his managers and co-workers have helped contributed to his long career. “I just love meeting new people,” he said. “And in this business you meet people from all
walks of life, from all nationalities, and people just want to be respected and taken care of, and I’ve been able to do that.” Spencer said working at Sears has been a lifelong blessing. His father died when he was 6, and his mother raised four children on her own, so he said he has worked all of his life. “And Sears Roebuck really helped me make a living, take care of my family and raise my girls,” he said. “I’m very grateful to the Lord for giving me favor with Sears Roebuck. The state of Texas is an at-will state, and when a company keeps you this long, that’s a blessing. So I’m very thankful that they have kept me on this time. I’ve been through many managers and many store managers and many immediate managers, and I feel very grateful that they’ve allowed me to stay on this long.”
Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
Spencer Continued from Page 2J
it used to be.” However, in spite of societal changes, Spencer said he has maintained a relationship with the Lufkin community built on trust and mutual respect. Several senior shoppers still depend on the personal referral of a sales associate, and with three decades of success stories, Spencer’s recommendation is as good as gold. “They know I’ve been here 30 years, and they say, ‘I trust you; you’ve always steered me correctly in the past,’” he said, “and they come back and repeat business, and I really enjoy that.” Parents even tell their children to look for Bobby when in need, and he’s always there. “They tell their children, their sons and daughters. Some of the younger ones come in and say, ‘My mother bought from you and now we’re buying our house and we have a family and my parents told me to come
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dan took over as owner. He said he was nervous at first, but over time he saw how much Sheridan cared about her team and how invested she was in employees’ progress and growth. “Over the year, I’ve gotten really close to her,” he said. “She was once in my position, a training position. And not only that, but she was in my position when I first started working here, so not only was she there, but she felt that initial nervousness. So for her to work her way up so fast — because she’s still really young — it kind of helped me because she did it, she helped others do it. As I got to know her, she really enforced, ‘I want to make you a better worker; I want to make you a better person,’ so my responsibility level was in-
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creased and now I can do more.” He said she has helped him balance school, work and a relationship, and to have the desire to take on more responsibility. “I do see myself taking the leadership position that I have here and applying it to school, younger students, when I go off to college next year,” he said. Stephanie Stanley said she’s been with the company for four months and that Sheridan “has been nothing but 100 percent support since I’ve been working here, and she makes a great leader. She’s a great friend.” She said Sheridan’s positive attitude and outlook on life have helped impact her outside of the workplace and improve her communication skills. “I’m usually a very shy person, but since I’ve been here,
she’s brought out my personality. She’s improved my people skills,” Stanley said. “She’s always pushing us to look at the brighter side of things and keep a smile on our face, and she will do whatever it takes to put a smile on our face. ... She gives us all the opportunities, and it’s up to us to take it and run with it, and I’m trying my best to do that.” Stanley said Sheridan’s history with Chick-fil-A has made an impact on her team and helped her be a better leader. “The fact that she’s worked here since she was 16 years old was very inspirational to me,” Stanley said. “The hard work that she had to put in to own a store is so awesome.” Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
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U.S. 59 South Continued from Page 1J
“I’m a 50-year-old shopper in a trendy shop, but they make me feel young,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m trying to be something that I’m not.” She said she enjoys shopping at The Spotted Zebra because “they don’t carry 50 of everything.” She said the clothes are fresh and trendy, but it doesn’t make her feel she’s playing dress-up. “They’re such sweet girls,”
Jungmann said. Hunt said she stresses good customer service for her employees because “that’s kind of the backbone of your business, how you treat people. We want to make them feel like they’re welcome there. If you don’t have good customer service, people stop coming.” She said building relationships with customers and making them feel welcome is a staple of her business. Ferguson and staff worker Jacqueline Bryant make an exerted effort to make the customer’s shopping experience an enjoyable one. When Jungmann came into the store, Ferguson and Bryant transformed from a store manager to a shopping buddy, showing Jungmann new merchandise, helping her put together an outfit, giving her feedback and advising her on shoes and jewelry to complete the look. Though they brought Jungmann different pieces, Ferguson and Bryant seemed more concerned that she left the store feeling pretty than making a sale. As a business owner, Hunt said, “I think if people have a passion for things — no matter how old you are — if you have a passion of something, go for it. This is something that I’ve always loved. I love the people and I love the passion, and I love to share it with people and I love our customers.” The store’s hours are 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sundays.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: South Lufkin Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Family-owned Texans Barbershop looking to expand to third location By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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high-and-tight, taper fade, a trim or an old-fashion shave — Texans Barbershop in Lufkin Mall can do them all. Co-owners Luis and Maria Vazquez said they moved back to Maria’s hometown three years ago in the hope of establishing a business for every member of the family. Luis, a barber since 1998, owned a shop called J.L.’s in Phoenix before moving to Lufkin. “We wanted to move back to a small town, and we thought we would come back to where I was from to raise a family,” Maria said. Her mother, father, sisters and brothers still live here, so having family around made the move all the more exciting, she said. “Lufkin Mall was the perfect location,” she said. “They offer a family friendly atmosphere, and it’s all-thetime busy. It’s just an environment you can bring your family and shop and get a haircut while they shop. See a movie, eat.” They started as a six-chair barbershop, Maria said, but as the barbershop grew its clientele it added two more chairs and two more barbers. Luis said he started working as a barber, because “he liked cutting hair into styles and it’s just something he liked to do,” Maria said, translating. The barbers cut all types of hair and types of styles, such as regular haircuts, high tops, fades and newer styles like mohawks and fauxhawks, Maria said. They also offer straight razor facial shaves. Though some women come in and get regular haircuts or fades, Maria said, the shop is mostly a man cave. The decor displays Texas history, from the Texas star and flag and the walls of the Alamo, but it also feels like a traditional, old-fashioned barbershop with checkered tiles and big, brown barber chairs.
Kelsey Samuels/The Lufkin News
Texans Barbershop owners Luis and Maria Vazquez are pictured inside the shop in the Lufkin Mall. Maria said the barbers can cut all types of hair for all types of people, but Texans Barbershop has received strong support from the Hispanic community. “We’re bilingual, so we can understand them and they can understand us. It breaks the barrier of language,” she said. Maria said one of her favorite parts of the business is when kids come in for their first haircuts. After their first haircuts, the kids get a photo with a certificate recognizing
their first haircut. All haircuts and styles are based on the customer, Luis said. “Every day, something new,” Luis said about the business. “Sometimes the customer comes in with different ideas of a haircut, and invent a haircut.” Over the past three years, it’s been a challenge investing time and energy into the business, but Luis and Maria work as partners in business and in life. In Phoenix, Maria worked as a preschool special needs teach-
Beall’s Department Store renovations complete By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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onths of dust, delays and renovations have transformed Beall’s Department Store in Lufkin Mall into a more modern retail business. Store manager Jessica Murray said the changes in the store’s interior will make for a happier shopping experience. “It was just time for a face-lift,” she said, “so everything went from a brown transition to a white. We’re all white fixtures now. We’re trying to get out of the brown, because white is clean and crisp and pretty-looking.” Since January, the renovations involved repainting the walls white, re-tiling the floor with white ceramic tiles and laying new grey patches of carpet around the store. Beall’s jewelry, cosmetics and fragrance section used to be in one large area, but the renovation has divided fragrance and cosmetics into their own, separate section. The store will also be incorporating three large displays for mannequins that will rotate around the different areas of the store: misses, men’s, juniors and young men. Beall’s has downsized its fitting room by shrinking from four fitting rooms to two — one in men’s, the other in misses’. With so much change, Murray said, she and her team are trying to continue business as usual. “It hasn’t hurt me yet. Customers are just glad they have somewhere to try clothes on,” she said. “It’s a more modern feel; it’s a cleaner feel. Right now, it’s a more spacious feel, and the customers love it.”
“It’s a more modern feel; it’s a cleaner feel. Right now, it’s a more spacious feel, and the customers love it.”
er’s assistant, but traded the classroom for more quality time with her husband and children. While the kids are at school, she works at the shop as secretary, accountant and general assistant, but when the kids are at home, she’s there with them, which she said is a dynamic she really enjoys. “I used to work as a teacher’s assistant, so it’s different working together and spending more time together,” Maria said. “It’s flexible. It’s kind of like a stay-at-home mom.”
She said working as a teacher and as a barber have several similarities, including, “You don’t work for the money, you work because you like it.” Texans Barbershop is open 10 a.m.9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It is closed on Sunday. A second Texans Barbershop opened in September 2013 in Longview Mall, and the family is currently looking for another location. Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
Mall walkers Continued from Page 5J
Anderson said she has led an active lifestyle for most of her life. For the past 10 years, she regularly walks four day a week, she said, and tries to walk about 45 minutes a day and complete five or six laps
around the mall. Walkers can be seen all throughout the day, Alexander said. After each workout, a group of the walkers have breakfast or coffee. The Lufkin Mall offers a
safe, air-conditioned place for people of all ages to walk, which gives it great appeal, Anderson said. “It’s like a neat little secret,” she said. Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
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Throughout the months, Murray has been responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the store along with organizing the changes and renovations. “It’s lots of moving fixtures,” she said. “You move fixtures every day.” Murray said Beall’s last renovation occurred about eight months ago when Clinique and Este Lauder were introduced to the store, and four years before that, the store got new carpet, but nothing compared to the level of its current project. The store’s grand opening, planned for the near future, may include new merchandise to accompany the new cosmetic changes to the business, but Murray said nothing was set in stone yet. She said she was looking forward to being able to show off Beall’s new look to the community. Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: South LUfkin the lufkin news
From 1968 to 2014: Angelina College has seen many changes By KELSEY SAMUELS The Lufkin News
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hings have changed since 1968. In Angelina College’s 1969 Chaparral yearbook, Dr. Jack Hudgins was board president; Randy Cordora and Janice White were Mr. and Miss Angelina College; Martha Schwartz was editor of The Pacer, AC’s student publication; the Roadrunners’ record in their first season of basketball was 8-18; and Rosalind Tims and Gary Sumlin played for the AC tennis squad. Vice President and Dean of Instruction Patricia M. McKenzie has been with Angelina College since 1969, when she returned home to Lufkin after teaching at the University of Pittsburg. McKenzie’s relationship with AC goes back to when it was only a seven-building campus that offered classes in business, science, mathematics, liberal arts, fine arts and nursing. Angelina College has transformed to a community college with 20 buildings, 27 occupational/associate degree programs, 25 community service programs and a rich history in its community. In 1968, AC’s story was just beginning. McKenzie said that in the first year at AC, the buildings were connected with plywood boards so students could walk to class. She said it rained so much in the first year, the campus was basically “a mud puddle.” When its doors opened in 1968, there was still much to finish, like the Student Union, cafeteria and other campus projects. The 1969 Chaparral shows students walking the halls in penny loafers, slacks and ties and mini-skirts as workers installed ceiling tiles and light fixtures. Before the current AC Library was completed, it was located on the second floor of the administration building. And the Student Union, or Student Center, was a multi-purpose building that hosted a ballroom, billiards, campus activities, nursing classes, band and choir all under one roof. Before there was a Temple Theater and Angelina Center of the Arts, AC’s fine arts de-
partment was in the current Hudgins Hall. Since the nursing classes were located over the first-floor activities center, McKenzie said, teachers would often go downstairs and say, “You need to stop having so much fun because we’re trying to teach nursing students.” AC has always been a commuter’s campus, she said, but with the addition of on-campus housing, students (primarily student-athletes) can have a college learning experience away from home. But before the dorms were built, student-athletes lived in houses with their coaches. In the Oct. 15, 1968, issue of The Pacer, Mrs. Cecil Ferguson took “ten energetic boys” from the AC basketball team into her home for the semester. “Times have changed,” McKenzie said, but the quality of education has always stayed consistent at AC. Since 1968, the college has been offering students opportunities for associate degrees, workforce programs, and preparation for students to become certified in their respective fields. AC offers several programs on campus, but has become notable for its healthcare careers offerings. In the early days, McKenzie said, AC was one of the only institutions in East Texas to prepare students to be registered nurses. Over the years, the nursing program has spread to include several other healthcare careers, including pharmacy technician, respiratory technician and vocational nursing. Within the past 10 years, AC has added four new medicalcentral programs to its roster such as Diagnostic Medical Sonography, Surgical Technology, Medical Office Procedures and Medical Lab Technician, and has expanded the LVN program to new locations in Livingston, Hudson and Crockett. But in 1969, all the school offered was nursing. “We prepared two-year people who would write the same licensing examinations that fouryears write,” McKenzie said. “It was a two-year program to put RNs back at the bedside, and we worked those people extremely
Angelina College Circa 1968
Contributed photos
A nursing student is crowned with her nurses hat. In the early days AC was one of the only institutions in East Texas to prepare students to be registered nurses.
Randy Cordora and Janice Students are pictured dancing at the White were Mr. and Miss Mardi Gras Ball. Angelina College.
The Angelina College Foreign Language Club of 1968 is shown.
hard.” She said an AC education prepares people to go to work in entry-level positions. Each student is trained to be competent enough that any instructor could put his or her life in the student’s hands with trust and confidence. “We worked them so they could take care of us,” she said. In the early days, students could travel to Houston for pediatrics lessons, Rusk for psychiatric care or the water department at Lufkin City Hall for nursing classes. In 1975, when hospitals in Lufkin and Nacogdoches canceled their vocational nursing programs, Angelina College began offering RN programs and vocational nursing programs to prepare students for immediate work experience. “It takes both the science and the art to be a nurse,” McKenzie said, “and Angelina College played a central role in offering East Texas health care professions.” McKenzie described the first class of AC Roadrunners as “a close-knit group,” since there were only about 680 students and a faculty of about 40 teachers. In that first year, students played a big role in shaping the Angelina College people see today. A quote in the 1969 Chaparral yearbook said, “We voted for everything from the Roadrunner mascot to the ratification of our constitution. Ballot boxes were makeshift — but strong on democracy.” Larry Phillips, president of Angelina College, said within the past 15 years AC has expanded and renovated nearly every inch of the original campus. What started as a seven-building college has expanded to new buildings like the 2001 Temple Theater and Angelina Center for the Arts, the baseball/softball complex, the industrial education building and expansions of the science and math buildings made possible by the 1994 bond. “There is very little around here that looks the same as it did in the 1990s,” Phillips said. He said several of the oncampus changes, like with the new health careers facility,
were driven by a need for more space and more technology. AC programs like radiology and nursing have both grown and evolved to the point that more space was necessary. The latest courses and programs added to AC resulted from a survey that showed the East Texas region had a need for these jobs. Along with changing the exterior of the campus, AC has also expanded to Jasper, Crockett and Polk County via the offcampus centers. AC has always offered off-campus centers, McKenzie said, but they used to be classes held in high school classrooms after hours. She said class sizes were limited. Now, with the three standalone, full-service centers, students can take classes closer to their homes. With these offcampus centers, out-of-town students can receive an AC learning experience with faculty assistance without driving to Lufkin’s main campus for class instruction. And with the changing landscape of the classroom, students don’t even have to leave their homes to attend class. In the early years, McKenzie said, AC coordinated with Dallas County community colleges to use and share pre-taped TV lessons on various subjects. She said he teacher would pop in the tape from Dallas, which had a talking-head lesson on it. In 2014, through an interactive TV network, about 70 classes can be streamed to AC students’ homes across East Texas. AC’s fall 2013 enrollment was 5,500 students, and online/ hybrid class enrollment has increased, Phillips said. “Students are seeing the value of starting at a community college, and also because of our programs — our workforce programs and health careers and technology,” Phillips said. “We provide small classes, very affordable tuition with lots of financial aid, and full transferability for freshman/sophomore classes.” Today, just as in 1968, Angelina College is a great place to start. Kelsey Samuels’ email address is ksamuels@lufkindailynews.com.
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Timberland Drive Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Progress Angelina County
Then&Now d n a l r e b m i T Drive
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
Jack’s Tapes & Records third-generation owner Sylvester Deason showcases his wares at his 500 N. Timberland Drive shop.
Inside this section ‘Draggin Timberland’.....2K Ray’s Drive In..................3K Timberland love stories .4K
Panther Drive-In.............5K Lufkin Ice House..............5J
Jack’s Tapes and Records
Still going strong after four decades By JESSICA COOLEY The Lufkin News
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s the third-generation owner of Timberland Drive landmark Jack’s Tapes & Records, Lufkinite Sylvester Deason said that although “Mr. Jack” passed away a couple of years ago, he plans to continue the dream that began four decades ago. Sylvester’s original predecessor, a World War II Navy veteran named F.L. “Jack” Davis Jr., opened his first “Jack’s Tapes & Records” store at age 44 in 1966 in Fort Worth. During the course of several years, he owned seven different stores. In 1969, Jack moved his family to Lufkin and opened a store on Frank Avenue that later moved to North Timberland Drive where The Lunch Box once sat. In 1974, he moved his final store to its current location, according to his former daughter-in-law, Judy Clifton, who began working for him in 1972. “He was in the car business and got started at the time of 8-tracks or 4-tracks in the mid-’60s,” she said. “The business started out with 8-tracks, and of course we sold all the accessories — 8-track players for cars, headphones. It went from 8-tracks over to cassettes in the early ’80s until we transitioned into CDs.” Judy remembers Jack as a “business-savvy, family man who was very involved in his church.” She said he also enjoyed helping people. “Jack was a kind, giving person,” she said. “At one point we sold gas, and if someone came in and said they needed gas, but didn’t have money, he would just give it to them. He would
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
This familiar storefront has been going strong as a Timberland Drive landmark for four decades.
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
Contributed photo
F.L. “Jack” Davis Jr. and his wife Ruth. They were married 49 years and died within seven months of each other in 2012.
This photo is of a picture that still hangs on the wall in Sylvester’s Deason’s shop of previous owner Judy Clifton with a Houston disc jockey that went on to become well-known named “DJ Screw.” He was responsible for a music style known as “chopped and screwed” that involves slowing down a song and repeating clips, similar to a record skipping.
also hire people to pick up papers on the parking lot. It would take them 10 minutes and he would give them a $20 bill — generous.” Through the years, numerous competitors opened and closed, threatening to take Jack’s customers and shut him down. Time and time again, his small shop persevered, Judy said. “When Hastings came to town, they called us and told us we should pack up — that they would run us out of town,” Judy said. “And they didn’t. They were open for several years but eventually, they — like all the others — closed. This was such a little tightly run mom-and-pop store. None of the other places made it except Jack’s.” Because Jack carried “vinyl,” he drew business from far and wide and even made a regular customer of George Foreman. The Houston boxer would stop by as he passed through Lufkin on his way to visit his mother in Marshall. “He bought tons of the gospel music,” Judy said, remembering that the boxing legend gave her an autographed copy of his book. “We would also have a lot of rappers out of Houston just getting started leave their CDs that they made. That’s how they would get their name out there. They had the talent; they just didn’t have the money. There were a lot of them that did end up on the Billboard charts.” In 1988, Judy took over the store when Jack retired to care for his wife Ruth after she suffered an aneurysm. Judy went on to purchase the store from him in 2000. Jack passed away in November 2012 at age 90, seven months after Ruth. The store’s current owner, a Houston native who spent the last three decades in Lufkin, said that when he first bought music from the store years ago, he never dreamed he would one day own it. A retired civil engineer by trade and deejay by hobby, Sylvester Deason said he figured that after putting in 29 years with the highway department, he would just ease into retirement. After becoming friends SEE Jack’s, PAGE 7K
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Timberland drive the lufkin news
‘Draggin’ Timberland Drive’
Facebook page reconnects former cruisers of Timberland Drive By JESSICA COOLEY The Lufkin News
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n the days of parents telling stories of walking to school, barefoot in the snow, uphill — both ways — and shouting the phrase “turn that racket down,” their eyerolling teenagers took to the streets to raise some cane and “drag Timberland Drive.” On Friday and Saturday nights, it was the “happenin’ place” to see and be seen. Avid late ’70s to early ’80s cruiser Cyndi Ricks described the experience as a “party on wheels.” “Windows down, 8-track playing, with lots of singing and laughing,” she recalled. “We cruised from the Sonic on North Timberland and back to the four-way stop sign at South First. On the way we slowed to look over Kiwanis Park, the old Walmart parking lot, which was on North Timberland then, and Howard’s parking lot checking for friends.” In later years, the route extended to include “the line“ in the old Angelina Mall parking lot, she said. “Draggin’ Timberland” gave way to “cruisin’ Timberland” from the South First Street Sonic to the North Timberland Sonic. Sometime in the last 10 to 15 years, that high-school trend died — possibly as fuel prices increased. The average price for a gallon of unleaded gas was 62 cents in 1978, 90 cents a decade later, $1.51 in 2000 and $2.79 in 2010, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration study. Though newly licensed drivers no longer cruise the two-mile section of highway, Cyndi reconnected Lufkinites with their pasts when she formed the “Draggin Timberland Drive” Facebook page. She said she started the page after joining a couple of other groups and enjoying the interaction on them. Nearly 3,000 members later, the page is going strong and growing by the day. “The original purpose of the group was to get together with folks who remembered Lufkin a long time ago and talk about life in our small town. I think it has grown far beyond that scope,” Ricks said. “When we were high-schoolers, the one thing we all enjoyed was drag-
“Windows down, 8-track playing, with lots of singing and laughing. We cruised from the Sonic on North Timberland and back to the four-way stop sign at South First. On the way we slowed to look over Kiwanis Park, the old Walmart parking lot, which was on North Timberland then, and Howard’s parking lot checking for friends.” Cyndi Ricks
Avid late ’70s to early ’80s cruiser
gin’ Timberland.” As the page’s following has grown, so has its collection of photos and stories. To date, the page has nearly 1,200 photos shared by both people who still call Lufkin home and those who have long since left. “People share many types of different stories — everything from remembering what Friday night was like when they were in high school to when did a certain business close,” Ricks said. “The historic documentation in the pictures and stories are phenomenal.” Long-lost friends have been reunited and even long-lost family members have been reconnected through the page, including Misty Pyle of Hudson, who found her father, Billy Martin. She spent nearly three decades searching for him, writing countless pleading letters to Oprah and performing dozens of costly Internet searches. Every time, she came up emptyhanded — “always a dead end.” Last year all that changed when Misty received a call from her aunt saying she needed to get on the Dragging Timberland Drive page because a “Billy Martin” had posted a message. After confirming with her mother that it was indeed him, Misty began messaging him on Facebook. She met her father for the first time at a Mexican restaurant in Lumberton last fall. She said it was like “looking into a
mirror.” Misty and her father both agreed that they don’t think they would have found each other had it not been for the page. “I got on there because like everybody else I used to drag Timberland, and that was his old stomping ground, too,” Misty said. “It’s a pretty cool Facebook group,” her father said with a laugh. Misty’s story is one of dozens like it as a result of the
“It seems like dragging Facebook is the new form of dragging Timberland Drive.” Cyndi Ricks
Contributed photo
This photo circa 1978 shows Dragging Timberland Drive creator Cyndi “Pinckard” back in her cruising days with Charlie Ricks. She would wed him the following January. Thirty-five years, two kids and three grandkids later, they’re still going strong.
sell his ware with a jingle of ‘hot tamales and that ain’t all’ until he got caught bootlegging,” she laughed. “After that, he changed his jingle to ‘hot tamales and that is all.’” As trends change with the
Contributed photo
Cyndi and Charlie Ricks today.
times, Cyndi said, she believes her Facebook group may just stand the technological test of time. “We never expected the group the morph into such an awesome documentation of
the history of Lufkin, but we love it,” she said. “It seems like dragging Facebook is the new form of dragging Timberland Drive.” Jessica Cooley’s email address is jcooley@lufkindailynews.com.
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Avid late ’70s to early ’80s cruiser
page, Cyndi said. From old-town gossip to local urban legends and debating the location of Lufkin businesses of yesteryear, Cyndi said the page has come to depend on its regular contributors who have a large amount of historical knowledge that is often unrecorded. “For example, the story of the tamale man who used to
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By JESSICA COOLEY The Lufkin News
I
n 1959, seven days after purchasing a little cafe perched on North Timberland Drive previously known as the “Dairy Kream,” 39-year-old Lufkin entrepreneur J.C. Ray tried to give it back. “He was like, ‘I don’t think I knew what I was getting myself into.’ But the man he bought it from, David Boles, wouldn’t do it,” said Lawana Ray, J.C.’s daughter-in-law. Lawana Ray is now the sole owner of Ray’s Drive-In, the legacy of J.C. and Opal Ray. The restaurant is known throughout Lufkin and beyond as having the city’s favorite hamburger. Packaged with an ice-cold fountain drink and tater tots, fries or onion rings, the meal is known as a “Ray’s Special.” Having traveled the world over, Lawana said she’s still surprised to see people recognize the “Ray’s” name. While shopping in an exclusive jewelry store on the Caribbean Island of San Martinique while wearing a Ray’s Drive-In cap, Lawana said, she interpreted the strange looks she got from the woman behind the counter as her being perceived as a shoplifting threat. Finally, the saleswoman asked about her cap, adding that she would “kill for a Ray’s Special.” “I said, ‘How in the world do you know Ray’s?’ She told me that for a short period of time she worked at Temple-Inland in Diboll, and she and her coworkers would make that trip twice a week to get burgers because they were so good,” Lawana said, adding that there have been many instances like that over the years. “My dad had a bus driver in Washington, D.C., try to buy his Ray’s hat because it made him so homesick for a hamburger. He had been raised in East Texas around the drivein. Another time, we were at a restaurant in Switzerland, and when someone mentioned we were from Lufkin, they asked if we were familiar with Ray’s.” Looking back on 54 years of business, Lawana said had her late father-in-law given back the cafe keys, she doesn’t know where she would be or even who she would be today. “That would have been a history-changer for lot of people,” she said with a laugh. To this day, there is one piece of Ray’s Drive-In history that has eluded the restaurant heiress — the building’s purchase price. All the family was ever able to find out was that around the time J.C. purchased the cafe, he took out a $500 loan from a local bank. “Two years later, the banker very jokingly said that he had loaned J.C. $500 and now he was making more money than he was,” Lawana said. “None of us believe J.C. was making that much money, but it made him proud to think he was, anyway.” For the first 10 years of operation, J.C. and his wife Opal ran the business with help from his sisters and a few faithful employees. Ray’s Drive-In was one of several “curbside cafes” operating with carhops along Timberland Drive. In the ’50s and ’60s its competitors included Read’s Broiler Burger, Sadler’s, Shifter’s, The Pioneer and The Rock House. Nine years later, J.C. and Opal convinced their two sons, Jerry and Billy — working out of state at the time — to return to Lufkin and become managers at the family business for $100 a week. “Jerry was working at Owens Illinois and Billy was working for General Dynamic. A hun-
Ray’s Drive-In
the lufkin news Then and Now: Timberland drive Sunday, March 30, 2014
Same location, same style of burgers since 1959
Contributed photos
Ray’s Drive-In at 420 N. Timberland Drive during its heyday in the ’60s to ’70s.
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
With nearly 55 years in business, Ray’s Drive-In owner Lawana Ray shared the secret to her family’s success: “The thing that put us in business and kept us in business is we’re still doing our burgers the same way we did in 1959.”
Jerry and Lawana Ray shortly before his death in 2012.
A young Jerry and Lawana Ray shortly after their whirlwind romance in 1971.
“We started out with just good burgers. Of course, our menu has grown. It is very diversified. The thing that put us in business and kept us in business is we’re still doing our burgers the same way we did in 1959.” Lawana Ray
Owner of Ray’s Drive-In
dred dollars a week was more than they were making at those two jobs, so they accepted,” Lawana said. Three years later, Lawana, who grew up in the Central area and didn’t frequent Ray’s as a kid because her father preferred another Lufkin eatery’s frozen root beer mugs, met Jerry Ray for the first time. Though he would quickly become her husband following a 13-day, whirlwind romance, she met him while he was chatting up her best friend Sandy. Because she had a car and Sandy didn’t, Lawana would drive her to Ray’s after class at Angelina College so Sandy could flirt with Jerry. “He would come up to my car and hang on the passenger window. They would sit there and flirt with each other while I ate a hamburger,” Lawana said, adding that the after-class ritual went on from August to November of 1971. At the end of November, she was washing her car at a Timberland Drive car wash that no longer exists and waved to Jerry as he and a friend left the restaurant on their motorcycles. “I felt like I knew the guy, so
I threw my hand up and waved at him and went on about washing my car. The next thing I knew, they had turned around and come back,” she said. “The minute they pulled up, I knew Jerry didn’t have a clue who I was. He asked me for a date.” After she accepted his invitation to go motorcycle riding the following day, Jerry asked if she could bring a girlfriend along for his buddy. Seeing it as opportunity to teach the twotimer a lesson, Lawana said she invited Sandy to be her plusone. “The next day, when Jerry and his friend showed up to pick us up, I thought he would die. He kept trying to pawn me off on his friend and pull Sandy to the side, but by the end of the day he had asked me for another date,” Lawana recalled with a laugh. “I told Sandy I didn’t want to get in the middle of anything, and she told me, ‘Go have fun. Y’all may like each other.’ They did. The “teaching him a lesson” date took place the last day of November. On Dec. 13, Jerry asked Lawana to be his wife. “I had an engagement ring
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by January, and in July we got married,” she said. That’s when Lawana became indoctrinated into the Ray’s Drive-In way of life and assisted in its daily operation. Things went smoothly and business was good, but in 1978 the company that owned the shopping center behind Ray’s Drive-In wanted to relocate J.C,’s business to South Timberland in the space where McDonald’s sits today. J.C. “absolutely said ‘No,’” Lawana recalled. “Then they turned around and said, ‘OK, if you’re going to stay here, we would like to remodel your building to blend in with our shopping center. That’s what they did,” she said. “The first remodel was done with their money, and that’s when we built the first dining room and the drive-through window.” The year 1978 was also when Jerry and Billy became full partners in their parents’ dream. From there, Lawana said, the business just “rocked along.” With business booming, the family did a second remodel on the building, adding on to the existing dining room for more seating. Lawana helped Jerry raise his son, though they did not have any children together after two unsuccessful pregnancies. Through her restaurant family, she said, “rest assured” she has children. “I have children everywhere, so that’s OK. I see them out somewhere and the arms just go up,” she said. In 1995 J.C. and Opal announced to the family that they were ready to retire, and Billy followed suit. “That threw it back on mine and Jerry’s shoulders,” she said, adding that they continued renting the building and land from J.C. and bought Billy out. The following year they added Ray’s West on South Medford Drive. J.C. and Opal passed away — J.C. at age 83 in 2004 and Opal at age 87 in 2011. Jerry and Lawana continued to run the two restaurants together until Jerry passed away in 2012 at age 64. “About eight years before he died, for health reasons he pulled away from the daily operations, but I still had him as a sounding board for things,” she said. “I miss that now.” In the summer of 2013, Ray’s SEE Ray’s, PAGE 5K
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Love
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Timberland drive the lufkin news
♥ on ♥
Timberland
Couples who met ♥ on Timberland Drive
Molly James and husband Johnny James ■■ ■■
By JESSICA COOLEY The Lufkin News
O
n Friday and Saturday nights, Lufkin teens of five decades ago hit the streets of Timberland Drive hoping to one day find their better half — the Annette to their Frankie, the Sonny to their Cher. Lufkinite Molly James, who met her love of 40 years on the iconic street, said the idea was to find someone you liked and “always be in the same spot — the ‘in’ places like Read’s, Ray’s or Sadler’s, just to name a few.” “Eventually, you usually were able to ‘bump into them’ or get a mutual friend to introduce you to someone you wanted to meet,” James said. “I truly miss those days of a certain innocence when it was a lot of good fun, good music and a camaraderie borne of being young and full of life.” Several generations of Lufkinites have resulted from chance meetings like Molly and her husband’s. Several of them, now nearing their “golden” wedding anniversaries, shared their loves stories with The Lufkin News.
Met at A&W on Timberland Drive in 1973 Celebrating 40 years of marriage in September
“It was actually a sort of blind date because a mutual friend asked us both to come to A&W Root Beer so we could meet each other. She knew I was too hung up on another young man, and that the relationship was going nowhere, and she felt she knew the perfect man for me. We met and never looked back, having been together 40 years in September, sharing a life complete with ups and downs, good times and bad, but always together. We are the proud parents of Keith and Jennifer, and six grandchildren, not to mention the arrival of our first great-grandchild any day! Needless to say, I wish A&W Root Beer was still here!”
George Saxton and wife Winnie Met at Dairy Queen on Timberland Drive in 1961 Celebrated 52 years of marriage this year ■■
■■
“I met my wife at the Dairy Queen on North Timberland in 1961. She worked there. That hamburger I stopped to get has really cost me over the last 52 years, but I still love her until death do us part.”
Wayne McClendon and wife Carolyn Met dragging Timberland at the intersection of Atkinson Drive in 1969 Celebrating 45 years of marriage in September ■■
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“We would meet girls when we got up the nerve to talk to them. I for one was a very shy person. The times were a whole lot better; at least to me, it was. I got out of the Army in December ’68 and was having a fun time. On March 28,1969, I was cruising Timberland when I pulled up beside a 1968 Mustang Convertible at the Atkinson Drive Intersection. I was immediately drawn to the passenger. I tried to show out and stalled my car. It took about two weeks but we finally got together and started dating. Less then five months later we were married and will celebrate 45 years Aug. 15. She told me later that the first night that we saw each other she told her sister that she was going to marry me. I guess one thing that made my wife and I compatible was the fact that we both liked cars. If she hadn’t, she probably would have killed me, because over our married life I have owned around 100 different cars.”
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the lufkin news Then and Now: Timberland drive Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Travis Ainsworth and wife Johnie Met at Pioneer Drive-In on Timberland Drive in 1956 Celebrating 54 years of marriage this summer ■■
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Sarah Stevens and husband James Met at Burger Chef (where Chen’s is now) on Timberland Drive Celebrating 43 years of marriage in December ■■
“I met Johnie Ruth Jordan at Pioneer Drivein on Timberland in August of 1956. We were married in 1960 and lived happily every after!”
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“I saw James on Timberland several times and wanted to meet him. One night he was inside Burger Chef talking to a friend, so we just stopped, went in and got introduced. I invited him to a party for my sister, who was leaving to work for VISTA, and the rest is history. So basically I just ran him down on Timberland!”
Ken Akers and wife Mable Met at Dairy Kream (where Ray’s Drive In is now) in 1958 Celebrated 52 years of marriage before Mable passed away ■■
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“I was transferred from Beausejour, Manitoba, to Lufkin and arrived here Nov. 8, 1958. After reporting in at the Radar Site, I met a couple of guys who wanted to come to town that night, and we ended up at the old Ray’s Drive-In. In the car next to us was three girls, and one of them was Mable Mathews. We were married Feb. 28, 1959, and we were married 52 years before she passed away a little over two-and-a-half years ago.”
Continued from Page 3K
Jessica Cooley’s email address is jcooley@lufkindailynews.com.
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Ray’s West burned, and Lawana decided not to reopen it and instead focus her efforts on where the magic began. Though she and Jerry talked about remodeling the cafe numerous times, it was something he “never could bring himself to do.” She is currently in talks with a decorator and contractor to make a remodel happen in the near future. “Let’s just say the women weren’t exactly consulted when this place was built,” she said with a smile, glancing around the restaurant interior’s woodpaneled walls, modestly decorated. “I may keep it rustic or I may go to a retro-type theme. We’ll see. I’m looking at a lot of different options right now.” More than anything, she said, she wants to add an outdoor patio for dining on the restaurant’s south side. No matter what look she goes with, the restaurant, which will celebrate 55 years in November, will likely continue standing the test of time. From her loyal customers to her tenured employees — some with 30 years or more — Lawana said she feels there is one reason people keep coming back to Ray’s. “We still get the meat every morning; we still cut our own tomatoes; we chop our own lettuce, we cut our own onion rings and hand-batter everything,” she said. “We started out with just good burgers. Of course, our menu has grown. It is very diversified. The thing that put us in business and kept us in business is we’re still doing our burgers the same way we did in 1959.”
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Sunday, March 30, 2014 Then and Now: Timberland drive the lufkin news
The Panther Drive-In
Long demolished drive-in still remembered as a favorite spot on Timberland By JESSICA COOLEY The Lufkin News
I
n the 50s and 60s vehicles carrying loads of people made their way to the corner of Denman Avenue at Timberland Drive to visit one of the largest capacity outdoor theaters in the country - Panther Drive-In. Opening between 1951 and 1952, the Lufkin theater was owned and operated at one point by Gulf Shores Theaters and Phil Isley Theaters at another during its estimated 2025 year reign. The drive-in was known for its iconic painting of a snarling Panther, which graced the back of the superstructure which held the screen.
Movie facts
from driveinhistory.com: ■■ The first film shown at a drive-in was the Adolphe Menjou film “Wife Beware” in 1933. ■■ Galveston was home to the third drive-in theater built in the U.S., the Short Reel Theater which opened July 5, 1934. ■■ In 1941, RCA introduced in-car speakers with individual volume controls which solved the noise pollution issue and provided satisfactory sound to drive-in patrons. ■■ During the 1970s, some drive-ins began to show pornographic movies in less family-centered time slots to bring in extra income. ■■ Spotlight 88 in Pennsylvania, was destroyed by an F3 tornado that hit the property on May 31, 1985. As a joke after the tornado hit, the owners put up in the now-showing sign “Gone with the Wind.”
Largest drive-in theaters in U.S. history Troy Drive-In: Detroit, Michigan. 3,000 cars Panther Drive-In: Lufkin, Texas. 3,000 cars
All-Weather Drive-In: Copiague, New York 2,500 cars 110 Drive-In Melville, New York 2,500 cars Newark Drive-In, Newark, New Jersey 2,400 cars Belair Drive-In, Cicero, Illinois. 2,300 cars Timonium Drive-In, Timonium, Maryland 2,479 cars Los Altos Drive-In, Long Beach, California 2,150 cars
The long-since demolished drive-in was located on the acreage along the west bank of Hurricane Creek that is now known as the Chestnut Village II shopping center. Near the intersection of Timberland Drive and Denman Avenue in Lufkin, the drive-in site included home decor store Tuesday Morning, as well as Fallas, The Women’s Shelter of East Texas Thrift Store, Bodacious Barbecue and a First Bank & Trust East Texas branch location. The entrance to the drive-in was off Denman Avenue. The screen faced north, and the viewers’ cars faced south. The Panther Drive-In’s claim to fame, as listed at www. driveinmovie.com, was having the largest amount of parking of any drive-in theater in the U.S. The number of parking spaces available at the Panther Drive-In was listed at 3,000. Lufkinites who visited the theater during its heyday said they remember a family atmosphere with food, playground equipment and at times, even carnival-style rides. “It was just a great time for everybody,” Ray’s Drive-In owner Lawana Ray recalled of visiting as a kid. “You would get there 20 minutes before the show and get all set up with your mosquito coils, blanket, and all that. There would be kids running around playing while the grown ups hung out and talked.” At the time, it cost around 25-50 cents a person though many drive-ins had “buck” night - $1 per car. Many Lufkinites said they remember watching from across the street at Read’s Broiler Burger, free of charge. “I remember my dad would go to Burger Chef and buy a sack full of those 19 cent burgers on the way to the Panther,” Ben Woltz shared on the Dragging Timberland Drive Facebook page. The drive-in theater concept was invented in 1933 by a New Jersey man named Richard Hollingshead Jr. who hoped to change the perception that going to the movies was a “date night” activity - babysitter required, according the a driveinhistory.com article. “Richard’s idea was to create an open air theater where you could watch movies from your car. You could bring the kids in their pajamas, dad did not have to dress up after that hard day at work and mom did not have to find a baby sitter,” the article stated. “So Richard began to experiment in the driveway of his home. He mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car and used it to project onto a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard. He placed a radio behind the screen for sound, then started his test of his idea. Richard tested sound with the windows up, down and half way. He tested many weather conditions. Using his
Contributed photo
This painting shows what Panther Drive-In looked like during its glory days of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s.
“It was just a great time for everybody. You would get there 20 minutes before the show and get all set up with your mosquito coils, blanket, and all that. There would be kids running around playing while the grown ups hung out and talked.” Lawana Ray
Ray’s Drive-In owner
lawn sprinkler, he simulated a rainstorm. Richard liked what he saw and heard.” He advertised his drive-in theater with the slogan, “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” Though his theater was only in operation three years, his invention led to the building of theaters around the country. At the time Panther DriveIn went up as one of three in Angelina County, the drive-in boom was under way, going from less than 1,000 in 1948 nationwide to nearly 5,000 by 1958 - the height of their popularity. The other two Angelina County drive-ins were Showtime Twin on 59 south and Redland Drive-In on 59 north. In the 60s, the drive-in theater lost its popularity, the driveinhistory.com article stated. “There were still drive-ins being built, but many were on their way out,” the article stated. “Some theaters even pulled their playground equipment in the 70’s as fewer families attended and movies targeting teen and adult audiences took over the outdoor screens.” Though an exact date was not found, it appears Panther Drive-In was demolished during the seventies possibly between 75’ and 76’. “In Texas drive-ins were a seasonal thing. Once people had the option of indoor, air conditioned theaters they just
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mentioned that, during the 1950s, drive-in theaters hit their peak in Texas with 400 such facilities. Today, there are 18 drive-in theaters in Texas including two in Tyler with admission cost averaging $5 to $10 per person. The number of drive-ins in the
state is up from single digits several years ago as the oldstyle, view-from-your-car form of entertainment tries to make a comeback in the day and age of high-definition TV, video games and webcasts. Jessica Cooley’s email address is jcooley@lufkindailynews.com.
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couldn’t compete anymore,” Ray said. Jerry Renshaw, a writer for the Austin American-Statesman’s XLENT magazine, included the Panther Drive-In in a sidebar of an April 2005 article. The Renshaw article also
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Lufkin Ice Company A look back at Lufkin’s ice houses
the lufkin news Then and Now: Timberland drive Sunday, March 30, 2014
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Jack’s Continued from Page 1K with Judy, he said, those plans changed in 2006 and “everything just fell into place.” “I just happened to be around at the right time,” Sylvester said, adding that Judy was close to selling it to someone else when he came along. “The guy was going to turn it into a barber shop. She wanted
where if anyone came in and asked her questions about any type, she could rattle it off. They could sing the song even, and she could tell them exactly what they were looking for. I haven’t quite gotten that good yet, but I’m getting there.” To stay competitive in what has become a digital-driven
of doing it.” Arranged around the shop, Sylvester has a variety of merchandise — new and used — including CDs, records, tapes, DVDs and other novelty items like T-shirts. He also purchases used CDs, records, tapes and DVDs for about $1 apiece. Sylvester said he even sells tapes, on occasion.
Contributed
“Lufkin Ice Company” off of Timberland Drive, before refrigerators people depended on ice house to keep food cold in ice boxes.
I
n days before refrigerators, Lufkinites kept food cold in “ice boxes” using the frozen blocks Iikely purchased from one of several ice houses in the area including “Lufkin Ice Company” off of Timberland Drive. The building was located in the same area where HEB sits today. At the time, the Cottonbelt Railroad line came through the area making it ideal for keeping meats and produce cold as they made their way to grocery store shelves, according to an article by Lufkin historian Al Vinson. “This required the ice plant to operate around the clock to produce enough ice and to serve the railroad cars as soon as they arrived, night or day,” he wrote. During the 20s and 30s, ice was delivered via a mule drawn carriage - the “smartest mules in the world,” according to Vinson. “The mules knew the ice route as well as the team driver did. The mules would patiently wait, while the
“The mules knew the ice route as well as the team driver did. The mules would patiently wait, while the driver delivered ice inside the house. Al Vinson
Lufkin historian
driver delivered ice inside the house. When he returned and mounted the wagon, they moved toward the next stop,” he wrote. “The ice wagons were in use through the mid-
“A delivery truck made its way across town each week, delivering ice, but only if a family had hung an “ice card” on the front door. Depending on which side of the card was up, an amount of ice was dropped off. The kid who failed to put out the ice card was certain to receive a lecture from his father, especially if the father had to drive to the local ice house and pick up a block of ice.” Bob Bowman
Late Lufkin historian
thirties, when trucks came on the scene.” Vinson himself, recalled working at the Ice House as a 12-year-old boy in the 30s for 50 cents a week. At the time, a 12.5 pound block of ice cost a nickel as did a movie, soda and/or popcorn, he noted in the article. “We didn’t eat a lot of ice, but when you take an ice pick to a four hundred pound block, you always had a few small pieces break away,” he wrote. “This was about the only perk I enjoyed that summer.” The late Lufkin historian, Bob Bowman, gave a nod to the days of ice houses in a column penned in 2010 in which he admitted to still referring to his refrigerator as an “ice box.” “A delivery truck made its way across town each week, delivering ice, but only if a family had hung an “ice card” on the front door. Depending on which side of the card was up, an amount of ice was dropped off,” he wrote. “The kid who failed to put out the ice card was certain to receive a lecture from his father, espe-
cially if the father had to drive to the local ice house and pick up a block of ice.” Though electric refrigeration became more affordable in the 30s and took a large part of ice house business, Lufkin Ice Company added a packing plant to stay alive. It finally closed during World War II, according to Vinson’s article. In the early to mid 50s, it caught fire and burned for several days, according to Lufkinite Dan Davidson who worked as a firefighter at the time. “That fire burned so hot, we just couldn’t get it out. They used cork for insulation and it can burn for days,” he said adding that the city had to call in Nacogdoches’ ladder truck. “Lufkin didn’t have one at the time. I believe that was 1954 or 1955.” A Lufkin Daily News article from the day after the fire stated the blaze may have been set by children and caused an estimated $50,000 in damage. What was left of the building collapsed and the land was eventually cleared, according to Vinson’s article.
ANDY ADAMS/The Lufkin News
Jack’s Tapes & Records third-generation owner Sylvester Deason.
to sell it to someone who was going to keep it a music store, and I told her I would definitely do that.” Five years into his ownership, Sylvester said, he “really sealed the deal” by purchasing the land on which the shop sits at the corner of Timberland Drive and Paul Avenue. He said the fact Jack and then Judy never actually owned the lot is something few people know. Having been trained by Jack himself, Sylvester said, Judy left big shoes to fill. “Everything that she did, she would always tell me, ‘Well, this is how Jack did it. I’m going to leave it like this, and you should probably leave it like this, too.’ She gave me a lot of good advice on how to run the store,” Sylvester said. “She learned the music to
marketplace, Sylvester said he offers digital music services to his customers, catering to those who may be intimidated by getting their music from a computer. At the time of Sylvester’s interview, he had just finished helping an elderly woman who explained to him she didn’t “like messing with all that computer stuff.” She thanked him several times and shook his hand before walking out with a smile on her face, gospel CD in hand. “There are customers like her. She would rather come here and let me do it than be fooling with a computer, getting viruses and all that stuff,” he said. “People will come in here looking for songs instead of the whole CD a lot of the time, so I’ll go on Amazon, buy the music and then burn it for them to save them the trouble
“People will buy old cars, especially around income tax time, and they won’t have nothing but a cassette player,” he said. “They’ll come in, ‘Hey, you got cassettes?’ I’ll show them what I got, and most of the time they’ll grab one or two just to have some music. I sell my cassettes for $3 apiece and my albums for $5 apiece.” When Sylvester does take that inevitable second retirement, he said, like Jack he hopes to keep the business in the family with his 11-yearold daughter, Aaliyah, and 17-year-old son, Thomas. “My son thinks it’s pretty cool that his dad runs a music shop,” he said. “He’s not fixing to run it anytime soon, but you never know.” Jessica Cooley’s email address is jcooley@lufkindailynews.com.
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